NASAtirical

 Technically, 'Humour'* Rather Than 'Satire'

You try coming up with a better title on your tea-break after having a shave and setting up things for lunchtime, all within 15 minutes.  The clock is ticking - GO!

     To what am I referring?  Why, none other than the South Canadian astronaut programs of the early to mid-Sixties, and their Project titles. Mercury and Gemini.

     For starters, Mercury was the Greek messenger of the gods, known for being fleet of foot. The Mercury astronauts were, at that time, the fastest South Canadians in the heavens.  Ho ho ha ha.  Yes, we see what you did there.  No, I'm not putting up a picture of a Mercury capsule, you had that yesteryon.  Art!

     This orbital puppy is a Gemini capsule, the hardware used to establish medical criteria, rendezvous and docking procedures, space-walking and other performance-critical tasks that would set a benchmark for the Apollo program.  It housed two astronauts, and got dubbed as it did because Gemini refers to the <ahem> 'heavenly twins'.  Art!

     This is the crew compartment for a Gemini capsule, and as you can clearly see, it's a Mercury capsule with pretensions.  The big white adapter module contained all the extra oxygen, water and fuel needed for the longer-endurance flights.  Art!

     What is of most interest to BOOJUM! however, is again part of the 'swords into ploughshares*' concept of using an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile as the launch vehicle for the Gemini capsules.  In this case it was the Titan II, and the 'II' part is significant, since it came into service in time to be appropriated by NASA after Project Mercury had ended.  Art!

The truly terrifying Titan Two take-off

     What you're looking at here is one of the old-fashioned swords that were like that of Damocles, writ extra large.  The Titan II carried a single 9 Mt warhead that could miss the target by a mile and still destroy it <several pages of unbecoming fascination with this particular sword excised courtesy Mister Hand>.

     The version we need to bring up on-screen is considerably more pacific, and if Art will do the honours -

     The relevant part is at the top, sitting on hundreds of tons of incredibly flammable, corrosive and toxic fuels.  Just another day at NASA: "Dear diary, went to work today strapped to an upcycled ICBM, and the Lakers won, hoorah!"  Art!

     In total there were 10 Gemini manned-missions (none of this 'Equal Rights' nonsense in the Sixties) in 1965 and 1966, and the roster reads like an apprentice school for Apollo: Grissom, Young, McDivitt, White, Cooper, Conrad, Borman, Lovell, Schirra, Stafford, Armstrong, Scott, Cernan, Collins, Gordon, Aldrin.  Again, not a bad set of statistics and achievements for a re-purposed Dig 'Em Out In The Craters nookylar missul (as the South Canadians murder the phrase).

     Now, when it came to Project Apollo, there was little or no levity about the title convention, Apollo being primarily the god of the Sun and of light.  It'll be a long time before we have a crewed mission to mosey about the Sun's outer regions, so settling for the Moon instead was sufficient compensation as well as th

     ANYWAY more of Apollo at a later date.

The Irony.  It Burns

I don't apologise for including this rather blurry set of clips, simply because it's an explanation in microcosm of Ruffia Mighty Ruffia.  Art!

     This is an armoured column approaching a 'scissors' bridge that has been laid by a specialist bridge-laying AFV to cross a gap that would otherwise be impassable.  Art!

     The lead vehicle on the bridge is in trouble.  This is partly because the bridge hasn't been laid properly and requires vehicles to approach it at an awkward angle with little room to manoeuvre.  Art!

     Oooops.  Art!

     One problem here is that, Conrad having checked dimensions, the bridge is only four or five feet wide, so there is little room for error.  

     The bitterly citric joke is that this vehicle taking a bath is a BREM - Art!

     A large, expensive Armoured* Recovery Vehicle that would normally be used to retrieve other AFVs that had, oh I dunno, fallen off a bridge.

Another Fall Into Water

More accurately, a deliberate jump.  Yes, an excess of both high spirits and alcoholic ones was involved, as a passenger jumped from a cruise ship balcony into the sea.  Art!

     This bafune, egged on by his friends, jumped from a balcony over 100 feet high into the water as a cruise ship was at anchor at Nassau.  He suffered injuries to his legs and was reduced to hobbling to the airport, alongside his friends.  Why the airport?  Because he was promptly thrown off the ship and permanently banned from any cruise liner.  He's lucky one of the liner's boats was around to pluck him out of the water.  Honestly, you can't fix stupid, but you can make it pay air fares.

The Plot Gets A Little Less Thin

You will remark that Conrad was speculating about the whys and whereabouts of ZMZReloaded, who has - or had - a Youtube channel devoted to zombie films, televisions and probably computer and card games to do with the genre, too.

     Anyway, as I pointed out, his last vlog was 3 years ago.  What happened?  Art!

     Hmmmmm well, nothing there in the thread that explains why an absence for years.  The oldest Community post seems to be from 4 months ago, and Ol' Zed explains that his work is seasonal, slowing down in autumn and being almost minimal in winter.  So he may be back.

Also, The Maundering Motivations Of Marix

Martin Marix Evans, that is, who has written a fair few books on military history, but who doesn't seem to  have been up to much lately.  Conrad could go look up a bibliography but would instead far rather rely on my memory and perceptions of current publishing.  Art!

One what I have got

     I thought that the sparseness of recent works was because he'd retired, having been born in 1939.

     Ah.  No.  Art?

    Died back in 2020 thanks to Covid.  You can't argue with that <sad face>

"City In The Sky"

Officer Kane has just come face-to-face with the TARDIS.  Predictably, he is no longer quite as dismissive of the Doctor et al as he was five minutes before.

‘Hello, again.  I’m the Doctor, this is Ace and this is Alex.  We’ve come to visit from the arcologies up in orbit.’

     This time the Australian responded, slowly, as if drugged.

     ‘Hello.  Hello.  Ah – I’m Kane.  Officer Kane of the South Australian Police.’  Which is when they noticed the embossed tin badges sewn to his shoulders: SAP.

     They led him back to the clearer grounds of the old main road, where he perched on a rusted remnant that had been a rubbish bin, once.  Still looking inebriated, he told them about himself: a guardian of the city’s remains, ensuring that people didn’t venture into the dangerously unstable, collapsing, friable and undermined city buildings, either out of curiosity or to steal.  He hadn’t heard the peculiar noise made by the Tardis, instead he’d witnessed swarms of normally indolent birds fleeing their perches before returning.  Investigation revealed a large cupboard –

     ‘After that, I don’t doubt you’re from the Stars.’

     None of them had to ask what he meant by that, although he carried on.

     ‘We’ve all heard about the people who lived in space.  Never bloody well imagined I’d meet ‘em!’

     A glance from Ace confirmed that the others picked up on the past tense.

Finally -

I think the tracking algorithm on Blogger has gone potty again.  And - I posted the wrong blog at lunchtime.  Better go remedy that.  Oops!

*  NOTE CORRECT SPELLING