Man Annoyed Humanity No Longer Doing Cool Things Like Sending Animals Into Space

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

A Betoota Heights man has today reflected on what he describes as humanity’s “imaginative decline” after realising it’s been ages since anyone sent an animal into space just to see what would happen.

Sitting in his traffic with a cigarette and a low-alcohol can of beer, 54-year-old electrician Coyne Sloyt said he’d been reading about the early space race when it struck him that people used to be much braver, or at least more bold.

“We used to shoot monkeys into orbit,” he said.

“Proper monkeys. Ham the chimp went up there in 1961, did some freaking out, got rattled around like a pinball and came back home. A hero. Now NASA just uploads mindfulness posts on Instagram. This generation, I tell you.”

Brett went on to describe the Russians’ even wilder approach, which involved firing stray dogs into the heavens with little more than a name tag and a prayer.

“Some of those dogs are still up there,” he said quietly.

“Frozen solid, orbiting the Earth forever. Imagine being an alien and finding that. Like getting a dead animal in the post. Crazy.”

The electrician said the decline in imagination was evident everywhere, with rockets now reserved for satellites rather than life forms.

“These days we just launch Wi-Fi boosters so people in the desert can stream porn,” he said.

“We’ve gone from brave chimps and loyal dogs to giving blokes in Winton unbridled access to hardcore pornography.”

Brett then flicked his smoke out and into the leafy gutter, looked up at the afternoon sky and muttered something our reporter didn’t quite hear.

More to come.