Burgers and fries in space... waiting to be devoured by alien life forms (via youtube)
This one slipped my recent "10 past and ideas for the future of Space Exploration" post... see those, and come on back!
Two crazy Brits have launched a burger and chips (french fries for you American types)into space as part of a marketing tactic for their Chosen Burger start-up. Fledgling entrepreneurs, Andy Shovel and Peter Sharman, tried to send a piece of their produce into space before but were unsuccessful in their attempt; the camera failed and the balloon didn't reach optimal altitude.
This time, they showed they had learned a thing or two. They succeeded in sending the first meal into space last week (without astronauts to accompany it)– proudly featuring their company logo well above the stratosphere. The balloon allowed the burger and chips to reach 112,000 feet into the air traveling at 35 ft per second. Upon landing, the balloon was about 35 miles away from its launch point in Fulham.
The journey of the space fairing burger and fries was captured flawlessly by a GoPro camera and the video was uploaded onto YouTube. You can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eR_Io-ecMg
The meal is majestic as it flies over the Earth. At one point the meal seems to catch some space wind and rattle about, dropping fries back through the Earth's atmosphere and towards the ground. I can't help hoping that it didn't hit anyone in the head on the way down.
Their YouTube video already has had over 130,000 views since being published on October 8th 2014. For a media stunt, I suppose this duo was quite successful so far. The entire stunt only cost them about 2000 Pounds Sterling (about US$3,200) which isn't bad either.
However, this stunt is a lot less magical than the Exobiotanica art project created b, artist Makoto Azuma. He launched plants into space in July to create beautiful pictures of nature in the vast and desolate landscape of space.
From the Exobotanica project (via Makoto Azuma)
New marketing efforts will probably follow suit and, before you know it, IKEA will send the first bedroom set into space. The whole display is possibly a cheap and silly ploy for attention, but here we are gawking at the beauty of the Earth, and the humor of a burger in space. Ah, humans – this would never happen in a world ruled by robots.
C
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