Eelpout Astronauts

[Guest]

NASA will be recruiting astronauts at the Eelpout 2002 festival
in Walker, Minnesota in mid-February 2002. These few, brave
men (and women?) will be traveling to Europa (one of the moons
of Jupiter).

The mission is currently in the feasibility study phase.

Look for our booth at the Eelpout festival to sign up for the
astronaut tryouts.

Successful candidates must be able to consume large quantities
of beer and produce effective quantites of extra-hot urine.
This may sound like a hoax, but it is based on sound scientific
reasoning and it needs to be throughly investigated.

I am a researcher working with NASA (the space people) on
mission-planning for an exobiological exploration of Europa (an
ice moon of the planet Jupiter). As you probably know, Europa
is expected to have a very deep salt-water ocean under a 10 mile
thick crust of ice. Recent energy-flux calculations suggest
that life exists in the ocean beneath the ice on this
moon of Jupiter. The current mission profile calls for using a
radioactive ball to melt thru the 10 mile thick ice crust to
allow a robotic submarine to expore the ocean of Europa for
signs of extraterrestial life. A landing craft would remain
on the surface of Europa to relay radio signals from the robotic
submarine to an orbiting ship that, in turn, would relay data
back to Earth.
Among other concerns, I worry that possible intellegent life
in this ocean beneath the ice of this distant moon might respond
to the radioactive ball as a hostile attack. We don't know what
technology the Europs may use in a retalatory counter attack,
but the potential for total annilation of the Earth is not beyond
the realm of consideration. As an alternative,I have suggested
to NASA the following method of melting an access to the core
of the European moon ocean thru the 10 miles of ice.

NASA has responded with a $10 million research grant to fully
investigate this concept.

Step 1. Recruit a few good men to work as astronauts to melt
a core thru the ice using hot, kidney effluent.
Step 2. The astronauts would form a line, each building on the
progress of the astronaut before them.
Step 3. After discharging their yellow contribution, the
astronaut would return to the end of the line of astronauts and
immediately begin drinking more beer to stimulate production
of additional urine.
Step 4. Step 3 would be repeated until the 10 mile core was
melted.

I believe this approach is inherently safer than the radioactive
route. An additional benefit is that if there is intellegent life
on Europa, the Earth would have a group of fun-loving astronauts
at the surface of Europa immediately available to meet and greet
and party with the Europs.

cc: Jerry Garcia, Carl Sagan

[wastewaterguru]

Alrighty then....This could possibly be an excellent oppurtunity for some lucky anglers. I would imagine that any life-forms surviving at the pressures under 52,800 feet of ice (10 miles) would very much resemble an eelpout. Who better then to greet our newfound friends than eelpout fisherman. Without question, NASA will request that these men bring a specimen back to Earth. Let's see....drunk eelpout fishermen traveling 3 years or more in space back to earth with one or more eelpout looking creatures just screaming "EAT ME". I just have this strange feeling that the Europians may actually respond better to a the threat of a nuclear attack rather than face the oppressive and voracious appetites of inebriated fishermen. I vote for the radioactive ball instead.

------------------
To the lake I go with passion pure,
And throw each day another lure.
This surely keeps my marriage sound,
Arguments are mute with no one around.

-wastewaterguru original

[This message has been edited by wastewaterguru (edited 02-12-2002).]