Sending Weird Things into Space - Can We Get a Big Cheese on the Moon?

Big Piece of Cheese on the Moon with Earth in background.

After Elon Musk's SpaceX program launched a Tesla with their Starman into space, Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, thinks he can go weirder by sending himself, his brother Mark, and a mystery winning bidder of a third seat in his Blue Origin, reusable rocket, the New Shepard, into space. Which is not weird in itself but kind of sounds a bit bonkers when you word it as "we're sending our CEO into space".

To be fair Jeff is fulfilling a life long dream of going into space, and probably wants to demonstrate that his new space tourism business is safe by trying it out for himself. I'm not sure Elon ever had a lifelong dream to launch a car into space but good on him for doing it just because he can.

Of course NASA and Russia's Space programs pioneered sending weird things into space in the 1960's, particularly chimpanzees, but, more weirdly a dog (or two?). I kind of understand the chimpanzees as an analogue for human space travel but I'm not so sure about the dog?

Since then musical instruments, pizzas, Lego mini figures, Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, and even people's ashes have been launched into space. Some to return and others not so much.

Not to be out done Elon is launching Dogecoin into space, possibly in the hope that it can reach a new high after his SNL appearance sent the cryptocurrency into a downward trend of 30% when he jokingly admitted it was a 'hustle.'

Of course he's not literally sending the currency into space. He's actually naming a satellite after it, the Doge-1, in a collaboration with SpaceX and Geometric Energy Corp., a Canadian technology firm.

The satellite will be paid for with Dogecoin and will be launched to the moon in some project that is described as the 'foundation for interplanetary commerce' by SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Sales, Tom Ochinero.

Personally I'm a fan of sending weird things into space but I'd like to see a little more imagination than company CEOs and electric cars. Living in a country that has an obsession with 'big' things, can we maybe install a 'big cheese' on the moon?

(Jeff Bezos doesn't count as the first big cheese in space).

Comments

What a Future with Flying Cars Might Look Like

Jetsons Style Flying Car - Image by TET & Leonardo.ai Regular readers of this blog will know that flying cars have been a recurring subject over the years. I even collected all my posts into a book you can buy on Amazon Kindle called Where's My Flying Car? The development of a true flying car is a fanciful one, largely because we've yet to come up with anything that actually looks like a car that flies. Most serious projects that even make it to a prototype are either small planes that compact into something you might drive from your home to an airport (if they don't have any vertical landing and take off (VTOL) capability) but you wouldn't drive to you local supermarket for the weekly groceries run, or they're some kind of drone/helicopter configuration with so many propellers you'll worry about shredding pedestrians who get too close. The dream is something that looks exactly like a car but can drive on a road, or hover (kind of like Luke Skywalker's ...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

Is AI Art 'Art'? The Say NO to AI Art Movement, and Why Human Artists Will Adapt

AI Art No T-Shirt by TET Also available on other items . Right now there is a big debate over not just whether AI art is 'art' but whether AI's are actually ripping off the work of actual human artists, without their consent, to create their images - particularly images 'in the style of' specific artists. From my own observations this debate started to get more traction when artist's signatures began appearing in the output of AI Art image generators. Is It Art? Cool Froyd the Cat Sketch by TET. My style is very much influenced by classic Disney and WB character styles. To get some clarity on how real human artists work (of which I am one)... we, that is all of us... take influences from the art that has come before. i.e. whatever artists we like, have studied, seen etc. we are influenced by. It shows up in our work, intentionally or not. If you really study my own cartoony art style you'll see I'm heavily influenced by early Disney and Warner Bros cart...

TET Artwork Diary: Cats, Goats, and Battlestar Galactica's Cylon, Number Six

Y ou wouldn't know it from this blog, where I reference it a handful of posts , but I am a big fan of the rebooted 2003 Battlestar Galactica Series . Which is how I come to be Facebook following the series most recognised Cylon, Six - well the actress who plays six anyway, Tricia Helfer . One thing you'll learn pretty quickly about Tricia is that she owns a lot of rescue cats - and that she's more at home being a farm/country girl, surrounding herself with animals than she is living in cities - though she definitely seems to drift between the two worlds with ease. Cats and Goats Tricia with Larry and Earl. Still from Tricia Helfer's FB Video . However, this is a blog post about a cat and goats, specifically Trica's Goats, Larry and Earl, that currently live at the Farm of the Free . She posted a video of herself visiting them on her Facebook . Click the link for the full video. Cat at Farm of the Free with Tricia, Larry, & Earl. Still from Tricia Helfer's F...

Tesla Unveils Optimus Robot Prototype and Second Generation Prototype - Movie, iRobot, May Be a Documentary?

Tesla Optimus Prototype One, Development Platform. September 30th finally rolled around along with Tesla A.I. day and the unveiling of not one but two Tesla Optimus Robot prototypes. Which was quite a bonus since we hadn't heard anything much about these robots when I wrote about them in July of 2022. Before revealing the first prototype, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, made a point of managing everyone's expectations, just in case anyone was thinking they were about to see anything close to the actual human concept 'robot' we saw last year. I honestly don't think anyone was expecting that. Prototype One - Development Platform The prototype that walked out on stage, for the very first time without ever being tethered to anything (apparently), was still incredibly impressive despite not being streamlined and highly refined in its capability. It walked quite well - eerily similar to the first generation robots in the 2004, Will Smith movie, iRobot , and even did a bit of a dan...

Mount Lofty Botanic Garden & Stirling Hotel, Adelaide Hills, South Australia

My partner, Enigma and I stayed overnight one weekend at an Airbnb in the Adelaide Hills to attend a wedding and needed something to do the following day to make our stay more of a weekend away. Enigma suggested a visit to the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden followed by lunch at the Stirling Hotel. If you're curious about our Airbnb stay it was in a self contained guest house known as Borow in the township of Uraidla. Definitely a very pleasant stay, but more functional than a relaxing getaway in itself. Best suited to someone touring the Hills region and just in need of somewhere comfortable to wind down at the end of the day that's more roomy and homelike than a hotel room. Mount Lofty Botanic Garden I've visited the Mount Lofty Summit several times over my last 23 years in SA, most recently as part of a guided bus tour , and I've never heard of the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden . Enigma and I were expecting something along the lines of the Adelaide Botanic Garden which i...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog