UnNews:New British Moon Mission Revealed

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

20 April 2007

Now all I need is some parraffin!

BRITAIN'S FINEST ENGINEERS are to "go it alone" and put together a self financed moon mission that would showcase the best of cutting edge British technology. One of the principle aims of the mission would be to locate a viable cheese source that could be used by any future colonists. The rocket will be "designed from the bottom up" and will hopefully be ready for launch by next Wednesday, just before teatime.

Project leader Professor Pinklenob stressed that: "The emphasis is on technology demonstration with the aim to randomly land somewhere on the moon. We will be using a VHS video camera on board to help us guide it via remote control software on our Commodore 64 computer, with more than 64K (thats 64,000 kilograms) of memory!".

Unfortunately there will limitations to the mission as described by the professor: "Once landed we won't have a roving capability as our budget doesn't stretch to the Lego wheels and lawnmower engine we would need to facilitate an excursion on the moon surface beyond wherever it is we eventually land." said Pinklenob.

Cheese source?

"It's also a good place to go because there could be cheese there," explained the UKs top Moon scientist, Dr Arnold Clitrot.

"It's an open question as to whether that cheese is in the form of edam or if it is simply a brie type consistancy within the lunar soil. But even if you've just got cheddar, a moon colony could live off a cheese and biscuit diet for decades!"

It will be one of the most complex moon missions ever proposed by the UK. All the stages of the mission must be faultless, "first the rocket will need to travel the 100 or so miles to the moon before it lands. The journey in itself may take in excess of five hours, so it'll be a packed lunch for us on launch day! Once on the moon we'll need to deploy the remote bucket and spade to collect cheese samples before we launch back to Earth."

Despite the complexities of the mission the team is confident of its success. This is despite their last doomed moon mission when Ground Control ran out of matches to ignite the rocket, resulting in five fatalities. "It was a particularly windy day then" Professor Pinklenob explained last night, "we will be using longer matches this time".

Meanwhile, in a separate endeavour, Scottish pioneers have successfully launched a haggis satellite to a height of some 32 metres above the earth surface using a giant catapult, "och, its like the sort you see in them auld 1940s castle battle films, to be sure", said a joyous project leader Harry McDogtird this morning.

Sources

• Button moooOOOooOOon "We've been to button moon, we've followed Mr Spoon" BBC, April 20, 2007