Ben's Not Writing

YouTube Reacts to Dark Knight Rises trailers

I'm in another YouTube Reacts, though boo to YouTube for making the guy who runs these take out all the swears:

 

NASA Mascots

In a time when cutbacks need to be made thanks to the invention of money in the first place, I was still a little saddened to learn of NASA’s mascot - a rubber chicken with a knitted spacesuit. Think of all the celebrated mascots of the past – wooden mermaid carvings on ships, Eddie from Iron Maiden, R2-D2…all things you can imagine being honoured by artists.

NASA’s effort is the outer space equivalent of a truck driver gaffa-taping a stuffed animal to the front grille of their HGV. Maybe the James Cameron-backed asteroid mining ship will have a more grandiose statue at its helm – possibly a bronze Jake from Avatar? Jack and Rose from Titanic? Of course, this isn’t the first low-rent mascot used on space missions. Let’s look back at some of the other things that have been sent into space along with those brave astro-people.

Cokey

Inspired by the dancing Pepsi can in the hit Eddie Murphy comedy-action movie The Golden Child, a similar character was dreamed up by the NASA crew prior to the launch of an experimental satellite in 1987.

Whereas the dancing can in the movie was a special effect animated by movie magic, the NASA team knew that they could not get a real can to move around of its own accord. Various prototypes came and went, some of which are still on display in the NASA museum, but the final choice was made when a NASA intern was out shopping for discount oats, and stumbled across a music-activated dancing can.

 

A NASA sticker was placed on its base, and Cokey was ready to head for the stars! Once up in the air, Cokey was launched out of the shuttle and into orbit, where it remains to this day. Whether Cokey is still dancing is unknown, but it brought good luck to the crew of the , who all returned safe and sound and had ice cream with their dinners for being brave.

  

Pina-4

As tales of corruption and cross-dressing spread throughout J Edgar Hoover's career, a cheeky NASA engineer suggested dressing one of their “phallocentric” rockets up in a pinafore, as a satirical jab at the FBI director. The idea rocked America, with most of the major press outlet decrying the move as “sick” and “not really that funny”.

Early artist's impression

The logistics of what was jokingly named “Pina-4” were too complex for the engineering team to put into practice, as none of them were that good at sewing, and a sewing machine large enough to handle the huge garment had yet to be invented. Instead, the engineers settled on a pink bow which was glued to the inside of one of the rocket’s control panels as an inside joke.

This backfired when, during an emergency spacewalk to repair part of the rocket’s hull, astronaut Jenkins Salberg discovered the bow. He mistook the bow for an alien organism, and in his panic ripped a tiny hole in the elbow of his space suit. He was able to get back inside the craft safely, but he later sued NASA for a substantial amount of money as his elbow felt “a bit funny” for many years afterwards, and would often feel cold even when he was in a hot bath.

 

Terminator Tim

NASA's naming engineers (namgineers) were inspired by Hollywood once more when the makers of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hit flop The Last Action Hero decided to advertise their movie by daubing the title onto a rocket.

To honour the most resilient man in movies, the NASA crew decided to fashion a replica model of Arnie from Terminator 2 out of tin foil and thrift store clothing. They then put him onboard in place of an astronaut who’d gone down with a case of the heebie-jeebies. This model was jokily named Terminator Tim after the astronaut who’d decided to stay on Earth.

Unfortunately the model did not pass basic flight training and so the weight differential was made up with a sack of potatoes, which was also named Terminator Tim. The potatoes did not survive the trip home, which is why NASA astronauts no longer eat potato-based products during missions, in honour of those forgotten spuds. The missing astronaut, Tim (REDACTED) has since claimed that he knew the fate which lay before the potatoes, which is why he refused to go on the mission. This has never been officially verified by NASA.