Mars Spacecraft Design Unveiled

Added on 21 March 2011

In extraordinary scenes earlier today, here at Long Midnight Publishing HQ in downtown Bandar Sera Begawan, the world famous publishing company-turned space exploration mega-corporation unveiled the design for the space craft with which they intend putting two men on the surface of Mars by early 2013. The world's press were in attendance for what some commentators are calling "the most remarkable day in the history of mankind".

There were gasps of astonishment as the cloth was pulled away from the design, revealing the iconic and intuitive simplistic cube shape. Most commentators had been expecting a familiar rocket, or perhaps a space shuttle-influenced concept, but instead the ground-breaking scientists at LMP shocked the world with their innovative cube design.

Elvis Shackleton, the LMP executive in charge of Spacecraft Production, was in bullish mood. 'Designing a space ship is not something you can do in a day, or even 48 hours. That's why our team of scientists have spent more than a week creating this astonishing concept in spacecraft technology.'

In amongst the swoons of admiration, the backslapping and the narcissistic masturbational ejaculations of self-satisfaction there were one or two voices of dissent. When asked how LMP intended getting the as yet unnamed space craft up and out of the Earth's atmosphere, Shackleton was short on details and big on platitudes. 'I think what this remarkable design proves is that there's pretty much no obstacle that our team of expert scientists cannot overcome.'

The only other voice of moral indignation came from a fellow calling himself Two of Twelve from the race known as The Borg.

'Like dude!' said Two of Twelve, 'we've been, like, doing the whole cube design thing for like millennia and stuff. This isn't innovative. This is, like, totally bogus and shit.'

Although initial reports suggested that the Borg would be consulting their lawyers, a Borg spokesperson later confirmed that they would be eschewing the courts and instead intended launching a full scale invasion and destroying the Earth.