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NASA to send retard into space

A NASA spokesman announced today that the American space agency intended to include a mentally retarded crew member on an upcoming mission to the International Space Station.

Head of the joint NASA/US Air Force medical research programme, Major Thomas Jones, stated that this mission was merely the next logical step in space medicine research. In 1998 ageing United States senator, John Glenn, was launched aboard space shuttle mission STS-95 to carry out medical experiments designed to measure the effects of space travel on geriatric astronauts. Similar experiments will be carried aboard the latest shuttle mission to measure those same effects on the mentally retarded.

Major Jones commented: "This is definitely not just a publicity stunt aimed at gaining favour with the NASA budget oversight committee. I'm sure we will gain at least 50 per cent more scientific data than we did with Senator Glenn's mission."

After a nationwide selection process for suitable candidates, James Poundstone of Corndike, Kentucky has been chosen. Poundstone, 24, is described by people close to him as: "A real cheerful l'il guy. He can do his shoelaces all by his-self... and nobody believes that story about him and the goat." Poundstone's mother Jolene, 39, stated: "Jimmy's been real happy since he got himself selected. He'd run around, clapping and pointing at the sky all night if we left his bedroom door off the padlock."

Poundstone will undergo a rigorous training regime to equip him with the skills required of a shuttle mission specialist. Major Jones commented : "What with that Tito guy buying himself a trip with the Russkies, I guess it's only a matter of time before we have to be prepared to send all sorts of people into space. Internet millionaires, oil barons and even rich politicians will want to go. Who better than Jimmy P. to teach us how space flight will affect any of them." NASA estimates that the cost of the mission will be $25 million (EUR 28 million).

When asked for comment, President George W. Bush said : "I think sending a retard into space is a fine idea. Society has inflicted a lot of discriminatisation on those folk, and if my administration can do something to help, then I'm all for it."

In further space news, NASA intends to mark the 1986 Challenger disaster with a spectacular fireworks display, writes BF Hart.

In an attempt to rid itself of another member of its aging fleet of Space Shuttles, America’s National Space and Aeronautics Administration will send another middle-aged woman to an apocalyptic, fiery death.

"It’s been a few months since anything really huge has blown up in America," noted Barbara Morgan, next in line to get the "McAuliffe Treatment", as colleagues at NASA have come to call it. Christa McAuliffe was the first school teacher destroyed in the American Shuttle-Disposal/Teacher Vaporizing Programme. "Americans deserve to see something really huge go off, and if I have to sacrifice myself in order to be patriotic, then blow my ass up!"

School teachers were added to the Administration’s Shuttle Disposal Programme as incentive for non-exploded educators to improve their student’s national standardised test scores.

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