The US finds a magnetic anomaly at Tycho and dig it up. When the sunlight hits it, it triggers a response that immediately beams a ZOMG radio signal to Jupiter, to wake up the giant monolith there. However, the super-intelligent and super-advanced aliens who set this all up never considered that it's a 50/50 chance that TMA-1 would be pointing anywhere near the right direction to talk to Jupiter on whatever given month it's dug up on.
Instead, Jupiter is near opposition, but the Americans Freak the Fuck Out over the radio burst anyway, and spend a small fraction of the money that would have been spent on the Discovery 1 mission on building a Faraday cage around TMI-1 instead.
![mg22329763.100-1_800[1]](http://wonkville.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/mg22329763.100-1_8001-720x552.jpg)
I'm thinking this would be great for Jupiter, but for the moon, not so much.
(We're about 17 years overdue for finding TMA-1.)
And now I realize How It Should Have Ended:
The US finds a magnetic anomaly at Tycho and dig it up. When the sunlight hits it, it triggers a response that immediately beams a ZOMG radio signal to Jupiter, to wake up the giant monolith there. However, the super-intelligent and super-advanced aliens who set this all up never considered that it's a 50/50 chance that TMA-1 would be pointing anywhere near the right direction to talk to Jupiter on whatever given month it's dug up on.
Instead, Jupiter is near opposition, but the Americans Freak the Fuck Out over the radio burst anyway, and spend a small fraction of the money that would have been spent on the Discovery 1 mission on building a Faraday cage around TMI-1 instead.
Magnets wtf?