Sunday, May 27, 2007

Taunting FAQ

How to get the most mileage out of your Space Tractor taunt.

What are the best themes to incorporate into my Space Tractor taunt?
Other than spaceships and farm equipment, we suggest making fun of the things that have made this team great in the past. We are generally loud and exceptionally obnoxious, so you could try to be even more loud and obnoxious than we are. The battery powered keytar has been a staple of this team for years and is always a good target. The team captain dons a thong during playoffs, so making fun of the size of his member might energize your team. Sadly, ex-Commish Sarah Heston is no longer on this team (or with the WKL at all) so making fun of her vagina is off-limits.

The taunt I have in mind for Space Tractor is amazing and hilarious. We are sure to win.
You are so extremely, painfully wrong, my friend.

I'm convinced that my best bet for a Space Tractor taunt would be to involve Miss Commish's fire crotch exposed in some way.
Yes, you and everyone else. I realize the absence of Sarah handicaps your taunt options a great deal, but you're going to have to leave the beaver out of it.

What is Space Tractor?

Born from the ashes of Keytarded and Hell Toupee, Space Tractor is both obnoxious and whimsical, backwoods and futuristic. After finishing the season as King Losers as Hell Toupee, Keytarded went on to take three-time world champs Danger Moustache out of contention during the first game of the 2006 playoffs. This year? The keytar and megaphone remain, but ex-Commish Sarah does not.

What is a Space Tractor? This spacecraft, proposed by scientists at NASA, would be launched into space to nudge planet-threatening asteroids off course.

Space Tractor [allbusiness.com]
a small space tractor that would snuggle up to a planet-threatening astroid [China View]

It's also worth noting that Leningrad Cowboys have a song called Space Tractor. Strangely, the Leningrad Cowboys are not from Russia, but from Finland, not unlike another Nordic band with a misdirecting name: I'm From Barcelona (who are from Sweden). Is "Space Tractor" by the Leningrad Cowboys the Space Tractor theme song? No. No, it is not.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Space Tractor to Cuddle Up With Nasty Asteroids

From China View. Reprinted without permission.

BEIJING, Jan. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- NASA astronaut Edward Lu believes America's space agency should design and build a small space tractor that would snuggle up to a planet-threatening astroid and give it a gravitational nudge to change its path to avoid a collision with Earth.

Lu told an audience at the University of Hawaii-Manoa Monday evening the 200 million U.S. dollar to 300 million dollar spacecraft would exert enough gravitational pull to alter an astroid's orbit.

"We're only trying to get a really tiny change in the velocity of the asteroid to prevent an impact," said Lu, a former University of Hawaii solar physicist.

Lu was a member of a panel that included three Hawaii scientists who characterized the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth as rare but deserving of the same level of attention as major earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes.

The asteroid Apophis will pass within about 20,000 miles of Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029.

"It's going to come so close to the Earth in 2029 that its orbit will change, and it might change enough so that it comes back and hits us in 2036," said Hawaii planetary scientist David Tholen, who discovered Apophis.

During the asteroid's next close pass to the sun in 2013, that risk will be assessed in radar surveys, he said.

Objects the size of a grain of sand frequently hit Earth's atmosphere, appearing as shooting stars in the night sky. But a larger impact could be devastating. Asteroids are blamed for the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and an explosion over Tunguska, Russia, in 1908 that wiped out 60 million trees over a 830-square-mile area.

According to a presentation by university astronomer Robert Jedicke, a Tunguska-size explosion would be able to blast or burn nearly all of Oahu.

Because the devastation would be great, the risk to a person of perishing in a major asteroid collision is about 1 in 10,000 or 20,000 over a 100-year lifetime -- the same risk associated with dying in a plane crash, Jedicke said.

The University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS program would train four powerful digital cameras toward the heavens to watch for would-be intruders.

Officials from the project are hoping to garner public support for putting the equipment on Mauna Kea. The telescopes also could be built at two sites on Haleakala, where a prototype is being built, but scientists warn the project would take twice as long to complete there.

Environmentalists and Hawaiian activists have argued against additional development on Mauna Kea, and some scientists have expressed concern about additional construction, as the volcano already hosts 13 telescopes.

The program would be able to provide decades of warning of an impending impact, the scientists said.

That would be enough time to launch a tractor spacecraft to knudge the asteroid into a safe orbit, said Lu, who spent six months aboard the international space station in 2003 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii's astronomy institute from 1992 to 1995.

To do nothing would be to invite disaster, he said.

"If we are wiped out by an asteroid, that will be our own fault at this point," he said.