OTTAWA, Ontario – Officials with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) held a press conference today to announce its new long-term plan for the nation’s operations in outer space. CSA is perhaps best known for the robotic arm that was used extensively to move cargo on the American space shuttle and to trim Justin Trudeau’s beard. Dr. Pleuteau Moonbeam, the acting director of CSA, outlined the key elements of the plan:
- Update the agency’s communications and computer technology. This will require retiring the steam-powered mainframe computer that has served since the inception of the agency in 1960. The boiler has been acting up and could explode at any moment. Also, nobody less than 70 years old knows how to program in FORTRAN, the only language that will work on the device.
2. Finish development of a new space suit. A prototype is being tested in a simulated Martian landscape in northern Yukon Territory. The idea is to come up with a single suit that can be used in earth orbit, on the moon, on Mars or in Quebec. A secondary purpose is to provide isolation from the Covid-19 virus and U. S. elections.
3. Investigate the use of Alberta bitumen as a rocket fuel and to see if surplus stock tanks from the Ft. McMurray area can be repurposed to serve as rocket fuel tanks. This would cost next to nothing and help solve a trash problem that has confounded provincial officials for decades.
4. Use confiscated Chinese sky rocket fireworks to launch a massive digital billboard into low earth orbit over Canada. Advertising space will be sold to fund other CSA projects. Tim Hortons and the New Democratic Party have expressed interest. However, the Green Party has expressed dismay over the potential air pollution from all that rocket smoke.
5. Build a spaceport at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to launch satellites into polar orbits. This would be most useful for weather observation satellites to warn of an approaching mass of hot air from Ottawa. This idea came from the Moose Jaw Economic Development and Ice Skating Commission. Five hectares of land at the city dump have been donated as a site for the spaceport.
