Into the Unknown – Strange Things in Space

UnknownLogoThis week I was curious about strange stuff in space. Here is some of the weirdest things humans have sent into space.

In 2010, Space X launched a wheel of Gruyère cheese into space. CEO Elon Musk was super secretive about the Falcon 9’s mystery cargo until after the mission.”If you like Monty Python, you’ll love the secret,” he told reporters. He later revealed that his “secret” was a reference to a classic Monty Python skit in which John Cheese tries to order cheese from a cheese-less cheese shop. The wheel of cheese returned to earth safely. And here I would of thought the cheese was for the Lizard men, sending them food as a peace offering.

Stunt cargo isn’t limited to private companies. In 2009, NASA hauled the actual Luke Skywalker lightsaber prop into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery, as Popular Mechanics reported at the time. It too returned safely to Earth. Of course they must send toys for the little hatchlings.

When astronauts traveled to the moon, they brought along itemized to-do lists strapped to their wrists. On the 1969 Apollo 12 mission, the people who prepared the notebooks decorated them with cartoons and porn copied from Playboy. One of the astronauts later told a Playboy reporter that they didn’t notice the photos until they were actually walking on the moon. Right!! NASA still hosts the old-school pornographic images on its website. They had to send pleasure to the lizard men.

There have actually been a lot of human remains sent into space — in fact, there are companies dedicated to the service. But the farthest flung remains belong to astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930. Before he died in 1997, he asked that his remains get sent to space. NASA later honored his request, including a small capsule of his ashes in the New Horizons probe that reached Pluto in 2015. Wonder what the lizard men thought of that.

Back in 1985, Coca-Cola and Pepsi took their ad war into the cosmos. Specialized cans carried both companies’ fizzy sugar drinks into low Earth orbit on a space shuttle Challenger mission. As Bend, Oregon’s The Bulletin reported at the time, astronauts were banned from showing the cans on TV to avoid tainting NASA with advertising. At least some of the cans contained now-failed “New Coke.”

Amelia Earhart was the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean. In 2010, her watch traveled somewhere even more remote: the ISS. Space.com reported that the timepiece arrived in the care of NASA astronaut Shannon Walker. Walker was the 55th woman in space. Hey, the lizard men do need to keep track of time.

NASA’s Juno mission, launched in 2011, is on it’s way to Jupiter. So NASA sent some LEGO mini-figs of Juno and Jupiter with it. According to NASA, in Greek and Roman mythology, Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief. From Mount Olympus, Juno was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter’s true nature. Juno holds a magnifying glass to signify her search for the truth, while her husband holds a lightning bolt. The third LEGO crew member is Galileo Galilei with his telescope, who made several important discoveries about Jupiter, including the four largest moons of Jupiter (the Galilean moons).

Sure, why the hell not. A lots of guns have made it into orbit too. Russian spacefarers routinely carried TP-82 shotguns along on their missions until 2006, in case they landed in unfriendly territory. Now they bring semi-automatic handguns. As Popular Science reports, they’ve also lofted an R-23 gun from an airplane into space and fired it.

And finally Buzz Lightyear also made it to space. We new this day was going to come. We salute you Buzz.

Love, Peace and prosper Lizard men. May you eat, drink and please thee self. Earthlings have sent some crazy shit into space. What would you send into space given the chance?

wordpress visitor counter