The Fridge Space Race

Media Week ME Aug 9

NASA recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon. It was meant to be a monkey on the moon, because NASA originally sent primates into space, but the scientists freaked out after watching Planet of the Apes and decided to go with humans. When I think of the moon landing I see the classic example of the client trying to save some money by cutting out their agency and film company, and doing the job themselves. The footage of Neil Armstrong is amateur to say the least. Bad lighting, only one camera angle. Conspiracy theorists will tell you the moon landing was shot in a studio. No way. If it had, it would have looked much better. I bet NASA regretted not forking out for a film crew and someone from their ad agency to go along on Apollo 11. And what about the talent. Neil Armstrong only had two lines and he still stuffed it up. ‘That’s one small step for man’ was supposed to be ‘That’s one small step for A man.’ NASA should have spent the extra money on hiring a professional actor, instead of roping in one of their staff. Look at Tom Hanks. He went into space and had heaps of lines and he nailed it. Apparently the modern fridge has more computing power than Apollo 11 did, and that got me thinking. Why don’t we send fridges into space instead of men? Think about it. If a fridge from earth, landed on another planet that contained life forms, what kind of impression would that make? Obviously they’d deduce that we are so busy and have so much cool stuff happening on our little green rock, that we don’t have time to fly around looking for aliens. This is automatically going to make us a must visit destination and we need an edge people. In case you didn’t know, the universe in infinite, so there are a lot of planets in lots of galaxies competing for that visiting space alien market. A fridge full of yummy food is a classy way to say hi. When one lands on the planet of the aliens who are responsible for all the anal probes, I imagine they’re going to feel pretty embarrassed. The only downside to our gastronomic gidday is that we’ll have to be careful with the expiry dates. It would be a shame for our first contact with an advanced race to be when their lawyers issue legal proceeding for food poising. When it comes to deciding what food to send, we can get those rich food companies to pay for the privilege. This would help fund the space program, rather than the poor old American taxpayer, and that way they their tax dollars can be put towards invading more countries. Imagine the publicity spin offs for a food manufacturer when they get a quote from an alien who has just arrived here that goes something like ‘ I traveled 45 light years for the cool refreshing taste of Nescafe Iced Coffee. I propose we send a selection of the planet’s greatest perishables, designed to titillate the taste buds and impress potential new visitors. We should definitely send ‘I cant believe it’s not butter’ and some real butter, so they wont be able to believe it for themselves. The space shuttle had a faulty O-ring, but I’ve never had a bad onion ring, so we should send some of those and a decent selection of low fat items would be advisable as well. Think about it. You never see chubby aliens. Those grays with the big eyes look like they watch their weight. Sending fridges into space would be a lot cheaper than rockets. You don’t even need one of the fancy ones with the built in ice dispenser, because there’s plenty of ice in space. The path to the final frontier starts in the kitchen. Forget ‘We come in peace.’ Lets go with peas and frozen carrots.