Keats' point is perhaps that the concept of interstellar travel should be reoriented to bringing ourselves closer to the asteroids, moons, planets and life already, er, living on our own planet. Especially if they can so handily -- root-ily? cactus-ly? -- beat us in the space race.

"We're not the first and foremost in everything," Keats (right) told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "On certain matters, such as the nature of Mars, potatoes now know more than we do. We can learn from them, as we can learn from all species."

Keats' exotourism explorations touch down this month. On Monday, LASA's non-human astronauts enter public orbit at the indie commercial space agency's modest headquarters on Cailfornia State University's Chico campus. A reception for LASA's exotourism bureau lands Oct. 21 at San Francisco's Modernism Gallery. Interested human exotourists can buy even a bottled Martian mineral water, if they want to go transhuman, according to Keats.

"The minerals, including pyroxene and ulvospinel and pigeonite, will be used by your body to make bone and tissue," he said. "Exploring Mars in this way, you'll start to go native."

We picked Keats' crafty brain -- which once tried to engineer God in a petri dish and create antimatter currency, among many other engaging experiments -- in the LASA gallery above. Click through the interview and images of Keats' creative exotourism and let us know in the comments section below if you're on board for the ride.

Authors: Scott Thill

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