Titan

NA'SSA Press Office

NASA scored an earth first by pretending to send a European Space Agency (ESA) probe to Saturn's moon, Titan. The 'probe' was then supposed to have recorded sounds from that moon and taken some photos of its surface. Amazingly amazing, but even more amazing is the fact that the ESA was reliant on NASA to 'process' the data before receiving it. Why might this be?

However, not to be outdone, NA'SSA (the world famous, North A'Scotland Space Agency), achieved the same thing just an hour or so later. As Dr. Jones, their spokespersonman explained, "It would have been even quicker, but we had to put the shopping away."

You can hear these royalty-free sounds here (surface noise) and here (radar scan of 'atmosphere'). Here, here, say the crowd. What's all this ear, as NASA might say.

There was, however, great desperation in NA'SSA headquarters on the evening of 15th January, 2005, as they faced the sobering realization that competing with Americon artistes was going to be almost impossible. For example, this picture from NASA left the real scientists in the North A'Scotland speechless:

Figure 1: From the Press and Journal of 15th January, 2005.

"Wowzers," said Prof. Steve Jones, "we're up the Clyde without a paddle when it comes to matching NASA's audacity on this particular science fiction image. I mean, we've secured the services of Mr. Lewis, the best technical illustrator since sliced bread, but crumbs, this takes the biscuit."

Dr. Jones agreed, "Yes."

He then added, "NASA's enormous spending on virtual reality is starting to bring home the bacon, even though I smell a rat. One day, NASA may even succeed in obtaining an image which does look virtually real. However, all is not lost, because although we have a budget which is a mere 0% that of NASA, we have persuaded Mr. Lewis to draw a stunning representation of what we could imagine our probe to look like. And don't forget, 0% of infinity is still a pound."

We tried to contact Mr. Lewis, but he was too busy with the latest issue of his favourite periodical :

Figure 2: Prestigious scientific journals regularly publish NASA's virtual reality images.