back to article Top secret payload fired into orbit aboard private rocket

All the world that cares about such things already knows that famous hecamillionaire Elon Musk this week achieved the remarkable: his privately designed and built space rocket, the Falcon 9, carried an equally personal spacecraft, the Dragon capsule, into orbit - and the Dragon then successfully returned to Earth and splashed …

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  1. Code Monkey

    Le Brouère

    That sounds lovely. Dangerous as I've not done the weekend food shopping yet.

  2. The Islander
    Alien

    Ehhh ...

    Perhaps Mr. Musk just intended to deliver an appetiser to our new overlords? So much tastier than brains after all

  3. MinionZero
    Coat

    @"Top secret payload fired into orbit aboard private rocket"

    For a moment there, I thought the US government had found a more secure place to put their most secret servers. :)

    Doing service calls would be an interesting experience. “Houston we have a problem, bring a new ATX power supply with you”.

    Jacket icon is in this case a space suit, complete with standard issue service engineer white shirt & tie. :)

  4. breakfast Silver badge

    Top Secret!

    Top Secret may be one of the best films ever made. Five points to Gryffindor for mr Musk's

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    He Just Destroyed His Business

    Trying to get american pork with french cheese ?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cheese

    Mmmm. Should have toasted beautifully as it re-enters the atmosphere.

    1. William Boyle

      Something missing

      Where's the crackers?! All that lovely toasted cheese, and nothing to spread it on! :-(

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    YES!!!!

    For two orbits the earth really did have a moon made of cheese!

    1. Jdoe1

      I thought...

      ...the moon was made of green cheese. They should have sent up old moldy cheese.

    2. Terry H
      Thumb Up

      @The JonB

      Brilliant!! I really did laugh out loud! You sir should take a bow. And probably deserve an El Reg T-Shirt. (er, we do have T-Shirts right?)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Wallace and Gromit?

      Should have made it Wensleydale :(

  8. OffBeatMammal

    good or bad?

    so... more importantly... how does it taste now after it's trip?

    1. Maurice Shakeshaft
      Joke

      Aged

      It wont have aged much - relatively?

  9. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    So is he going to sell

    this cheese from space? No doubt there are those who would pay a premium for such a special cheese (fools, money, easily parted, etc).

  10. blackworx
    Thumb Up

    Mmmmmm

    Space cheese

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Remake of "the blob" perhaps?

    People being attacked by mutant babybells warped from space radiation? Kind of like Day of the Triffids with blue-veins?

    I for one welcome our new cheese-overlords (with a box of crackers and a Kyle-Reese attitude).

    1. Mike Moyle
      Coat

      Don't worry about the mutant babybells...

      Now, if he had recovered a giant Space Blancmange, THEN, you could start to worry!

  12. Anonymous John

    Well, someone has to say it.

    "No crackers, Gromit! We've forgotten the crackers!"

  13. Charlie van Becelaere

    Le Brouère?

    Why not a nice Red Leicester? I hear it's staggeringly popular.

  14. Andrew Moore
    Alert

    hmmm

    I appear to have suddenly come over all peckish (esurient)

    1. stanj52

      Esurient

      I now realise how educationally challenged I am and I am very sad.

  15. Dave The Cardboard Box
    Alien

    Now watch the movie

    http://www.wackyadvice.com/halloween/halloween2002.shtml

    OK, it's a spoof but it sounds far better than Avatar.

  16. blackworx
    Joke

    You can tell he's a child of the 70's

    Who else would go to those lengths for a fondue party?

  17. William Boyle

    Aardman on the job

    It sounds like Wallace and Gromit had a hand in this mission! :-)

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Title Number 5 - I'm having hoops.

    I hope the heat shield didn't malfunction or his cheese would have been toasted.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    you missed the obvious groan worthy pun

    in homage to the classic Monty Python sketch in the cheese shop

    in Fromage surely!

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

      But the cheese should have been

      Ilchester

  20. yeehaw....
    Coat

    Hmm, mind filled with malicious thoughts...

    Should have been Spam and Chocolate Mousse (bad ass with a Thompson hehe).....

    Besides, it's already been done - What happens when you send a female cosmonaut into orbit with a yeast infection? Space Cheese!

    -screw the door, jumps through window.....

    (and I was even in voting lmao)

  21. Bad Beaver
    Thumb Up

    Lovely

    Just lovely.

  22. Ciaran McHale
    Paris Hilton

    Missed opportunity

    He missed an opportunity to put a paper plane into the payload as a form of one-upmanship on The Register.

  23. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    I find it incredibly reassuring

    that in these days of terry wrists, leekers, dossers... Hmmm, DDOSsers & corrupt (normal) politicians, someone still managers to do something undeniably daft, and FUN!

  24. jake Silver badge

    I'm surprised ...

    Surprised that nobody's commented that the Brits were first with cheese in space!

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/space_cheese/

  25. David Kelly 2
    Happy

    Disc Golf

    Looks more like a well used disc golf frisbee than cheese to me.

  26. bazza Silver badge

    On the space station? Really?

    That's just what you want in a confined, sealed tin can of a space station hundreds of miles above the earth with no possibility of opening the windows to get some fresh air. A smelly, French cheese. A pongy, stinky, slimey, smell-that-goes-through-glass French cheese. Especially one that's been nicely warmed up on top of a large rocket. I would imagine that the smell of old socks is bad enough, but adding such an olfactary assault in to the already much over used air of the space station could be the very last straw. Some vital piece of equipment may just break, melt, or develop sentience and drop off seeking a fresher orbit of its own.

    And another thing. When they send missions off to Mars the rocket men have to get rid of as much bacteria as possible from the probe to avoid contaminating the Martian environment. No one wants to look for life on Mars and then discover that we'd already introduced it. Hasn't Musk just rendered all those precautions pointless by bring such a collection of virulant and deadly bacteria within only a few tens of millions of miles of these hitherto pristine environments?

    1. Captain DaFt
      Coat

      So....

      You're saying that you're not a fan of French cheese then?

      1. bazza Silver badge
        Happy

        Nope...

        I Love French cheese a lot!

        Perhaps the Martians should be relieved that Musk didn't launch a Stinking Bishop. I don't think that Wikipedia's entry describing this cheese as having a "distinctive odour" comes anywhere close to the olfactory reality:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinking_Bishop_cheese

        Chili's have the Scoville scale. Why can't there something similar for a cheese's aroma, the basis being the number of miles of space vacuum required to bring the smell down to an undetectable level. I've been in the same room as some Camemberts that would surely rate somewhere near 1 Astronomical Units.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Blessed are the cheese makers

    and other producers of dairy products

  28. gimbal
    Happy

    Cheese and Good Cheer!

    It's great to see that Musk can continue the tradition of bringing a sense of humor to success in spaceflight. I hope SpaceX does very well in realizing their spaceflight projects.

    Maybe it'll give Virgin Intergalactic a run for their money, as well. Cheers, all, for halfpence on the two cents.

  29. Swanny

    May the cheese be with you

    waits patiently for said cheese to appear on ebay..........payment by paypal only

  30. json
    Pint

    I'll cheese to that!

    next time a bottle of wine!

  31. bugalugs
    Paris Hilton

    Is the SpaceX syndicate

    planning to share the cheese amongst the program participants, perhaps ? A teensy piece would be an interesting, if over-temptingly ephemeral, momento.

    ▲ unravel : joke no today cheesy

  32. Winkypop Silver badge
    Joke

    Cheesus!

    Gouda be praised!

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Headmaster

      I am afraid that pun just does not work

      if you know how to pronounce Gouda (G as the ch in Loch, ou as in ouch, that hurts)

  33. Mr Michael Strelitz
    Happy

    Smelly cheese

    Boy was that cheese high

  34. annodomini2
    Joke

    More to this than meets the eye?

    Dig at the US's obsession with fried cheese?

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