
SpaceX's top secret payload - rglovejoy
http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20101209
======
Bud
I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't get any science out of this. If you're
going to send cheese to space, you should hire some food writers to eat it,
compare it to non-space cheese, see if there were any salutary effects, etc.

~~~
electromagnetic
No, you start a brand of 'Space' cheeses, and then when transit to and from
the moon becomes regular you expand to a line of 'Moon' cheeses.

------
ugh
For those, like me, who don’t get it:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3KBuQHHKx0> (I still don’t _really_ get it,
though.)

~~~
nhebb
I didn't get it either, but someone explained in it the youtube comments:

 _The cheese shop proprietor symbolizes﻿NASA. "You do have some cheese, do
you?" "Certainly, sir, it's a cheese shop."_

------
StavrosK
So uh, how much did including that wheel of cheese there cost?

EDIT: Why the downvotes? I can't imagine sending 2-3 kilos to space is cheap.

~~~
crgwbr
The rule of thumb I've always heard was sending thing to orbit cost $10,000
per pound. Not sure how true that is with SpaceX though

~~~
pjscott
What matters here is the marginal cost of sending cheese rather than some
other mass to simulate a payload.

------
roedog
It's not just ballast, or ebay fodder. I see two symbolic meanings of the
cheese related to SpaceX's asprirations: Cheese is food, which symbolizes the
ISS resupply mission. And the cheese wheel symbolizes the moon, where they
also want to go.

~~~
Smithi
I heard it was a low-tech test of their heat shield performance. That's why
the joke works - they had to see how runny it was.

------
ck2
Just imagine if they had to do an emergency abort and blowup the capsule in
midflight.

There would be a mysterious burning cheese smell across the country :D

------
iwr
All they missed was a can of spam.

