Apparently inspired by Kurt Vonnegut, Aeospace scientists want to imitate art:
Scientists plan to shoot massive load of sperm onto the moon
I saw the headline, and I immediately thought of the Vonnegut story from 1972 published in the famous Again, Dangerous Visions book edited by Harlan Ellison.
Vonnegut’s tale of extra-terrestrial male gamete distribution was set in 1989, so it’s taken longer than he thought. The visionary author was premature in his projection but definitely had the right idea.
Can we expect to have a Handicapper General in our future? Or Martian tent-rentals? I can’t wait to see!
I wondered – what is the point? Vonnegut was riffing on the phallic shape of spaceships, and the uber-masculine space race as a striving for domination and penetration of space, and all that. It works as metaphor, but nothing else.
Evidently these guys want to use the moon as a safe sperm depository. Would that work? Don’t you want to save eggs, too? Aren’t you still vulnerable to cosmic rays and solar winds and the like?
The article says the plan includes saving eggs too, but let’s face it, a load of sperm is funnier, so I see why they went with that for the headline. And it would be stored in underground lava tubes, supposedly safe from radiation, temperature changes, and other space oddities.
First message from space:
“Send more Chuck Berry…we don’t need any more hair gel.”
Now all we need is for some pranksters to paint a huge pornstache on the side of the rocket just prior to launch.
As opposed to a huge something else, because, you know, children might be watching.
