Countdowntoourfunny

futureinOuterSpace... E

I

T IS NOW exactly fifty years since Neil Armstrong be-

came the first man to set foot on the moon, and his

“one small step” on the lunar surface back on July 20th

1969 has gone down as one of the most momentous

events in human history. But whilst no-one decries the bril-

liant feats of science, engineering and sheer bravery that

took those astronauts on their million-mile space adven-

turehalfacenturyago,itisperhapsnowtimetoadmitthat

the Apollo 11 mission wasn’t very funny.

Over the course of the entire eight-day voyage through space

to visit our nearest planetary neighbour, not a single memorable

gag was cracked by the three Apollo 11 astronauts or any of the

200-strong Mission Control team back in Houston. Even the crew’s

splash landing 900 miles southwest of Hawaii wasn’t played for

laughs, with the straight-faced spacemen missing every single op-

portunity to deliver side-splitting one-liners while being winched out

of the rolling NorthPacific and onto the deck of theSS Hornet.

What a wast if any

of today’s top pitus

or Michael McIntyre, had been crewing the iconic mission back in

1969, not only would Apollo 11 have been a voyage of inter-galac-

tic discovery, it would also have been a laugh a minute.

Justthinkofthehilariousgagsthatbig-bonedcomicJoBrandcould

havewovenoutofaweightlesswalkacrossthelunarsurface.Orthe

slapstick mayhem that knockabout funnymanLee Evans could have

wrought whilst capering about in the Sea of Tranquility, sweating

like a pig in a spacesuit that was two sizes too small for him. And

late madcap Hitler-impressions comedianFreddie Starr would cer-

tainly have had the Mission Control scientists splitting their sides at

their computer consoles as he cavorted about the lunar surface with

swastikas drawn on the legs of his spacesuit.

With plans now well advanced for NASA astronauts to re-visit the

moon within the next decade, let’s take a look at what preparations

are underway to make 21st century lunar missions much more ofa

laugh-fest than their dismal, po-faced 1960s predecessors.

A

NYONEwho’s been

to see a Whitehall

farce in aWest End

theatre will tell you thata

man’s trousers falling down is one

of the funniest things on earth.

But would it also be one of the

funniest things on the moon?

Scientists warn that the force of

gravity on the lunar surface is just

one sixth of that on our home

planet, meaning that once an

astronaut’s braces snapped, it

would take his spacesuit strides

up to five seconds to slowly drift to

the ground, revealing his bare legs

and the suspenders holding his

socks up. The joke would be tel-

egraphed a light year in advance,

and not even a fellow crewmem-

ber playing a descending note on

a helmet-bound swannee whistle

could make such a gag even

slightly amusing.

For this reason, NASA boffins are hard at work developing a pair of vertically elasticated

spacesuit trousers with a spring-loaded strap running down from the waistband to the astro-

naut’s socks. As soon as the astronaut’s braces give, his trick strides will be briskly yanked

down with six times the force of lunar gravity, mirroring the descent of their earth-bound coun-

terparts and thus guaranteeing a proper slapstick guffaw from the millions watching on TV.

E

VERYBODYremembers BasilFawlty’s gourmet night road-

side meltdown, when he hilariously attacked his conked-out

Austin 1100 with a branch. But the arid atmosphere of the

moon supports no vegetation of any kind, meaning than an as-

tronaut would have nothing to hand with which to launch a similar attack

should his Lunar Rover unexpectedly break down during an exploratory

mission across its desolate, crater-pocked surface.

Of course, the astronauts could take a suitable branch with them when

they blast off from earth, but then the audience would see it and the gag

would be ruined. Just like inFawltyTo wers back in the seventies, the joke

relies on the spaceman frustratedly running off camera and returning,

branch in hand, seconds later.

NASA intend to get round the problem by blasting a selection of suit-

able branches up to various locations around the moon well in advance.

When their Lunar Rover conks out, future astronauts can be confident

that, lying in a lunar crater nearby, they will immediately be able to lay

their hands on just the piece of leafy, bonnet-bashing foliage they need to

get a proper belly laugh from their frustrated antics.

EDY