Categories: Commercial Space

SpaceX Reveals Dragon’s “Secret” Payload

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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.

Top Secret payload revealed. Photo Credit: Chris Thompson, SpaceX

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.”

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

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