NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—Officials at the Kennedy Space 

Center announced Tuesday that they have set Aug. 6 as
the date for launching $700 million from the Denarius
IV spacecraft, the largest and most expensive mission
to date in NASA's unmanned monetary-ejection program.

"This is an exciting opportunity to study the effect
of a hard-vacuum, zero-gravity environment on $50 and
$100 bills," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin,
who noted that prior Project Denarius missions only
studied space's effect on fives and singles. "Whether
the money is immediately incinerated because of hard
radiation, or freezes in the near-absolute-zero
temperature and shatters into infinitesimal pieces, or
drifts aimlessly through the cosmos before being
sucked through a black hole into another dimension, it
will provide crucial information for our next series
of launches, which will consist of even greater sums
of money, in larger denominations."
Denarius IV, the fourth in a series of unmanned
monetary-dispersal probes, will leave Earth's
atmosphere at 36,500 miles per hour—the highest
velocity at which money has ever departed the planet.
Said Project Denarius lead scientist Dr. Lou Weaver:
"The craft's time-release hatches, using cutting-edge
ATM money-ejecting technology, will systematically
discharge the currency at intervals of $50,000 every
three seconds. Cameras on the craft's exterior will
capture images of the bills as they majestically
pirouette into the heavens, dotting the black void of
space with elegant spirals of green." Until now, the
image of money floating in space was available only
through artists' renderings. 
Far more ambitious in scope than the previous missions
of $88 million, $110 million, and $375 million,
Denarius IV is a two-stage spacecraft. Its solar
probe, Croesus, will disengage from the main craft in
October and release $12 million into the sun. The
craft, with its remaining payload of $688 million,
will travel across the solar system, reaching Jupiter
by June 2007. Once there, it will eject the money from
the cargo bay in what will be the largest single
financial deployment in NASA history. 
"This is just another step in our long-term goal to
put $1 billion on Mars," Weaver added.
NASA is continuing to perform extensive endurance
tests on portions of the $700 million, including
acclimating it to extreme atmospheric pressure by
deploying a sample stack of $200 million to the bottom
of the Pacific Ocean; strengthening its resilience in
high-temperature conditions by sealing it in airtight
containers and lowering them into the lava flow of
Hawaii's Mauna Loa; and replicating the
high-acceleration environment of space travel by
shooting bundles of dimes out of magnetic-rail
accelerators at thousands of feet per second into
giant axial fans.
Some in the private sector are attempting their own
currency-expelling spaceflights, including Virgin CEO
Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic plans to eject
£2 million from the still-theoretical SpaceShipThree
orbital aircraft. Yet Griffin felt confident that NASA
is far ahead of its private counterparts and rival
state-run space agencies, saying that Project Denarius
will be the "jewel in the crown" of taxpayer-financed
space exploration.
Although polls indicate that a majority of Americans
support the NASA mission, some fear a repeat of 2003's
Denarius III disaster, in which hundreds of thousands
of dollars burned up in Earth's atmosphere when the
ship exploded shortly after leaving the launchpad.
Reports suggest that one of the craft's solid-gold
money clips failed during liftoff.
NASA officials dismissed the risk, saying that, should
the mission fail, the lost money could be replaced by
any of the other stores of $700 million the agency has
 in reserve, and that the mission could be re-launched
as early as January 2007.
FROM THE ONION
May 3 2006       
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47977/print/