Greetings, curious reader. You have stumbled upon the Guide’s most unnecessary feature: a weekly contest devoted to sniffing out rare whiffs of originality in spaceflight.
Here’s how it works: below you’ll find three curious travelogue entries. Each describes something that actually exists, though written in the Guide’s usual mix of admiration, sarcasm, and cosmic confusion. Your task is to guess what they are. The answers will be revealed next week. Unless, of course, the planet explodes in the meantime, in which case the answers won’t matter.
Last Week’s Answers
- The Swiss Grasshopper with a Cheese Hat → Gruyère Space Program’s Colibri VTVL rocket hopper (yes, they really taped cheese to it).
- The Thinking Fridge in Orbit → UC Davis + Proteus Space’s AI-powered satellite with a live digital twin onboard.
- The Boozy Engine on the Test Stand → Student-built N₂O + IPA engines, stepping stones toward reusable European launchers.
After-reveal: Humanity is apparently one Camembert sandwich away from conquering the cosmos.
Entry One: The Cosmic Pancake Machine
Some engineers have decided satellites should be shaped less like flying buses and more like dinnerware. Flat, stackable, and modular, these orbital pancakes promise to snap together like galactic Lego, allowing payloads to pop in and out as casually as batteries in a remote control.
To the untrained eye it looks like a storage container of coasters; to the trained eye it looks like job security for anyone who ever lost a Lego brick under the sofa.
After-whiff: When your spacecraft doubles as Tupperware, you’ve achieved true modularity.
Entry Two: The Sunbather That Doesn’t Burn
Most solar cells shrivel like damp tissue when confronted with the harsh vacuum and tantrums of cosmic radiation. A group of researchers, however, have painted theirs with a magical shield so the cells can sunbathe in orbit without collapsing into dust.
If it works, satellites may finally soak up sunlight without the nagging risk of becoming crispy space toast.
After-whiff: SPF-50 for satellites has finally arrived.
Entry Three: The Lone Kiwi Who Touched the Sky
Somewhere in the far reaches of the southern hemisphere, a solitary tinkerer coaxed a homemade rocket to claw its way above the Kármán line. Against all odds, and presumably against several concerned safety briefings, the vehicle shot skyward at supersonic speeds, briefly brushing the edge of space before gravity remembered its job.
It wasn’t a national program, nor a company, just one determined human and a machine stitched together with grit and late nights.
After-whiff: One person, one rocket, one loud argument with gravity.
Contest
Can you identify these three improbable innovations?
Answers revealed in next week’s edition, assuming no one sets fire to the launchpad kitchenware in the meantime.