NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space

NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space
May 3, 2006 | Issue 42·18

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.

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