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In exciting news for the future of space travel, SpaceX, the commercial space travel company owned by bizarre billionaire Elon Musk, the US National Safety Council has deemed SpaceX no more dangerous than the most dangerous mobile phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 and has since set many impressive space-travel milestones. However, the company is best known to the general public for the rockets that regularly blow up on the news.
Of the 11 rockets tested by SpaceX, 6 were accidentally destroyed during testing, most as a result of entertaining explosions. The 12th rocket was tested on March 3 and unlike the previous 2 tests, actually landed without exploding; before blowing up anyway 8 minutes later just for a laugh.
In comparison, the Galaxy Note 7 was released by Samsung in August 2016 to replace a range of self-igniting washing machines produced between 2010 and 2013.
Although the phones did not include a clothes washing function, the exciting spontaneous combustion feature was retained thanks to a special battery design which allowed the positive and negative terminals to unexpectedly contact each other. This feature was loudly criticised by users who had the phone explode in their pocket, however Samsung considered these users to be liars as their pants were on fire.
Consequently when the Note 7 was recalled and reissued with a new battery, the controversial feature was retained, thanks to a similar battery manufacturing quirk from the new battery supplier. Samsung eventually stopped production and recalled all Note 7 phones in October 2016, the final cost to the company being estimated at US$17b.
“This announcement is a testament to how close mankind is to commercial space travel” said the National Safety Council in a press release. “5 out of 12 rockets didn’t blow up, which may not sound impressive until you consider the Galaxy Note 7 blew up 112 times in a month.
It’s highly likely that within our lifetime we could see space travel as something no more dangerous than those stupid angled blade vegetable slicers or that awesome toy that all those injured kids got banned”.
