[/caption]
During Wednesday’s post-flight press conference, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed the rumor of a secret payload on board the Dragon spacecraft, but said he wouldn’t reveal what it actually was until Thursday. He did say, however that if you liked Monty Python, you would like this payload.
True to his word, SpaceX just issued a press release on what was inside this container, above, that was bolted to the floor of the Dragon spacecraft.
See below.
It was a wheel of cheese, which references a classic skit from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, where actor John Cleese tries to order cheese from a cheese shop that has no cheese.
A skit about cheese doesn’t sound funny, but it is. 42 different kinds of cheese are mentioned in the skit; the kind on board Dragon was Le Brouere cheese.
Many fellow journalists speculating on Twitter agreed that the secret payload was likely a can of Spam — which would reference both Monty Python’s hit “Spamalot” as well as pilot Chuck Yeager’s admonition that early astronauts were just like “Spam in a can.”
Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer…
For a little over a month now, the Earth has been joined by a new…
Despite decades of study, black holes are still one of the most puzzling objects in…
74 million kilometres is a huge distance from which to observe something. But 74 million…
Astronomers have only been aware of fast radio bursts for about two decades. These are…
How do you weigh one of the largest objects in the entire universe? Very carefully,…