The Monday Morning Mirth

Tag: NASA

  • Thw Windshields of Airliners

    Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

    British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains.  Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers.

    When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof  shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control  console, snapped the engineer’s back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.

    The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.

    You’re gonna love this . .. …

    NASA responded with a one-line memo:

    "Defrost the chicken."

  • The Navajo Elder’s Message to the Moon

    When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training.

    One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks. The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question.
    His son translated for the NASA people: "What are these guys in the big suits doing?" One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.

    Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder’s comments into the microphone were brief.

    The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said.
    The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
    So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder’s message to the moon.

    Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message:

    "Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land."

  • The Cowboy and the Yuppie

    A cowboy was herding his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

    The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?"

    The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Munich, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

    Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1586 cows and calves."

    "That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his BMW.

    Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

    "You’re a consultant." says the cowboy.

    "Wow! That’s correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

    "No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; then you wanted to get paid for an answer I already knew; to a question I didn’t ask; and you don’t know anything about my business."

    "..Now give me back my dog."

  • Saddam’s Coded Message

    After hearing numerous news reports saying "We don’t even know if Saddam is still alive", Saddam decided to send George W a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he is still in the game. Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a coded message:

    370HSSV-0773H.

    Bush was baffled, so he typed it out and emailed it to Colin Powell. Powell and his aides had no clue either so they sent it to the CIA. No one could solve it so it went to the NSA and then to MIT and NASA and the Secret Service. Eventually they asked MI6 for help. They cabled the White House:


    "Tell the president he is looking at the message upside down…"