"We are wasting so much rocket fuel to generate the thrust necessary to leave Earth's orbit when we could just build a train track all the way to Mars or Jupiter," said a lobbyist for the train industry. "And just think about how pleasant a ride from Earth to Mars would be, coasting along the space tracks at 200 miles per hour for the next 193 years."
The initial proposal would only cost approximately $10,000 trillion, according to a representative of one environmental think tank in D.C. "This is really a bargain when you think about it," she said, pointing to a complex series of calculations she had performed on a LeapFrog laptop. "Besides, we can just print money to pay for it. Or maybe have a bake sale or something."
The network of space trains would only function for a few seconds before needing to be rebuilt as the earth orbits away from the newly built track and rips it to pieces. But the environmental lobby insists this is a positive, pointing out that rebuilding the interplanetary space rail indefinitely will provide countless jobs that otherwise would not exist."Every broken train track, every new space train car, every broken space train window will contribute to the economy," said one leading environmentalist.
California is ahead of the curve and has already begun work on its own high-speed space rail, but it was immediately delayed for 770 years and will now cost 52x the original estimate.