Trips to the moon
FORMER Nasa executives are launching a private firm to send people to the moon - if they can afford to pay $1.5 billion (R12 billion) for the trip. That is what the Golden Spike Company is charging. Clients could be private individuals or national governments.
The goal is for the first of up to 20 launches to take off before 2020. South Africa is said to be part of the target market.
Nasa's last trip to the moon was 40 years ago and, in the decades since, the moon seems to have become a little passé.
President Barack Obama cancelled Nasa's planned return to the moon, saying in effect that America had been there, done that.
But Golden Spike has talked to other countries that have shown interest, says the company's president and former Nasa associate administrator Alan Stern. He says he imagines countries like South Africa, South Korea and Japan becoming his clients.
"It's not about being first. It's about joining the club. We're kind of cleaning up what Nasa did in the 1960s. We're going to make a commodity of it in the 2020s."
The company will buy existing rockets and capsules and develop new space suits and a lunar lander, he says.
Why doesn't somebody organise visits to Isipingo at a fraction of the price? Okay, there's not too much at Isipingo – but there's a heck of a lot more than on the moon.
Dem bones
TO MOST of us, one dinosaur fossil looks much like the next. Even the fundis weren't aware of the significance of Nyasasaurus parrringtoni, who had been knocking about the London Natural History Museum since the 1930s.
He had been found by Rex Parrington, of Cambridge University, at Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi). Scientists studied the fossil in the 1950s but reached no conclusion. Nothing was published.
Now scientists from Washington University believe he represents the first dinosaurs to walk the earth, 245 million years ago - 10 to 15 million years earlier than any other discovered examples.
Not only that, he seems to have a cousin in the South African Museum, in Cape Town.
Oh yes, that's old Nkandlasaurus.
Python bounty
WILDLIFE officials in Florida have put a bounty on the Burmese pythons that have invaded the Everglades and are gobbling up indigenous fauna.
Next year they will hold a month-long Python Challenge in which people are invited to catch and kill the snakes. Winners will receive up to $1 500 (R12 400) for the longest python and $1 000 for the largest number of them caught.
The Burmese pythons are believed to be former pets whose owners abandoned them when they grew too large. They have found a niche in the Everglades and are breeding, destroying indigenous wildlife. A really monstrous pregnant female was caught and killed only a few weeks ago.
We used to have a stripper in Durban who specialised in dancing with a python under strobe lights. I wonder where she is now? This could be her big moment.
So smooth
THE WORLD'S most expensive coffee comes from beans plucked from the dung of a herd of Thai elephants. The beans are gathered a day after the dung has been, er, deposited.
Black Ivory Coffee sells at £156 (R2 100) for 500g and is marketed as "earthy in flavour and smooth on the palate".
The unique taste is caused by the gut reaction inside the elephant. "When an elephant eats coffee, its stomach acid breaks down the protein found in coffee, which is a key factor in bitterness," says Blake Dinkin, a Canadian who has developed the product. "You end up with a cup that's very smooth without the bitterness of regular coffee."
Some Black Ivory Coffee for you?
Er, no thanks. Too expensive.
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Sleep-over
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-40s: "It's the wife's birthday tomorrow. She wants breakfast in bed. So I'm letting her sleep in the kitchen tonight."
Tailpiece
She: "Don't open that wardrobe door – your Christmas present's in there!"
He: "Too late – and what would I want with a half-naked milkman anyway?"
Last word
Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
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