Tag Archives: space program

Cloud Cutting

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Many of you long time readers are aware of *The Institute’s weather modification program. We developed this ability to modify and even create certain kinds of weather early on in The Institute’s development. This was done for many reasons, all of them altruistic, but mainly for money. The Institute is expensive to run and maintain and we seek funds wherever we might find them.

We have different projects in the works constantly to fund our operation, from our innovative metal can retrieval program from the roadsides of our Nation’s highways to assisting NASA with their Space Program by supporting probes to Uranus and beyond. We have an outreach program where we have housebound or incarcerated individuals address envelopes for various corporations to help keep the Post Office’s Junk Mail program alive. That keeps untold dozens of postal workers busy and gainfully employed. There is no project too small if it assists us in maintaining the integrity and longevity of The Institute and brings in a buck or two.

Our supremacy had been untouchable in the weather modification arena and we had been so far out front that you had to jump up in the air real high to even see our dust. Then the Aussie’s got in the game. Man, they are tough. Their program to limit rain and cause desertification of huge areas, if not all of their country, has been unassailable. Our program to “drought up” California has been good but we can’t even touch what the Australians are capable of. Which is difficult for us to admit. Right now they’re the ones we watch.

Because of their (we’re talking about those miserably overachieving Aussies here) ability to make inroads into the weather modification business in general, we have had to look for other areas of the business to augment our extensive programs. We believe we’ve hit on something the rest of the WeatherMod group hasn’t touched yet and that is the untouched field of Boutique Weather. This is a small business at this time but we think the potential is absolutely enormous.

There are many very wealthy States that have incredible tourism businesses. States like Colorado, Utah, Arizona ( a biggie ) Montana, parts of New Mexico and when they pay their bills (which is why we have them in a “droughtie” right now) Northern California that are looking for that edge to keep those tourists coming in and to keep them there longer. That’s where we come in. We are already supplying many of those states and other small touristy kind of countries with custom-designed sunrises and sunsets. With our new custom “Cloud Cutting” ability we can custom tailor those sunrises and sunsets by ‘cutting’ the edges and shapes of the clouds so that they can feature or highlight a tourist drawing element, by allowing the light to be directed on them for maximum viewing pleasure. Think, Devil’s Tower, or parts of the Grand Canyon, Isis for instance, where before you had a pleasant sunset that sort of showed off the various elements of the scene, but now with our Patented Applied For “Cloud Cutting” technology, those individual elements can be seen by those money-toting tourists much more clearly and colorfully than ever before. Talk about making it rain greenbacks, we can hardly keep up with the demand for these new custom tailored clouds. Now coupled with our ability to create clouds of any size, shape or profile we feel we have a real winner here. Need God beams, we can do that. Need tiny or large holes or openings in your cloud for extra special effects? We can do that. Right now the sky’s the limit, so to speak.

The image featured above is over the Eastern edge of The Institute’s testing grounds where we work on many of our new weather projects. This is the program at work using the new “Sun nibbling” feature where we are sculpting the edge of the cloud to perhaps highlight a small secluded cove on the Eastern Seaboard, or perhaps one of the little canyons that feed into the Grand Canyon, or a meadow up in Yellowstone where elk graze in the early morning or evening. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

We have high hopes for this new element in our Weather modification program and already interest is running high for this unique new addition and we see big things on the horizon. Watch the sky above and stay tuned for further innovations.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

April Fools Day – Sorry Australia

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April Fools Day, the bane of serious scientific organizations all over the world.

Here at The Institute we have enough of an image problem without adding to our misery by trying to play lame-ass jokes on ourselves or other scientific organizations so we have had a ban on playing April Fools jokes from the beginning of our presence here on the World Wide Web.

Take our Space Program for instance. How can you be a creditable user of space when no one takes you seriously. You can’t, that’s how. So first thing this morning we sent up our usual reminder to our crew in the “Institute1” our own space station and Earth orbiter, built and launched from our space center over behind the commissary right here on The Institute’s complex saying “No Freakin’ Jokes Today, Got it !”.

Well we were too late of course. We sent the ‘no joking around’ message in plenty of time but the goofs up there were doing that thing with the radio where they say ” What’s that? Can’t hear you.” and “Sorry you’re breaking up,” making those fake wind and static sounds, ” must be solar interference.” then they hang up and keep doing what they’re doing. We could hear them up there laughing and making those fart noises with their hands in their armpits, someone had butt-dialed Earth and didn’t know it, so we could hear everything they said. That really cheesed off The Director, as not doing that joking stuff is one of his most stringent rules. Somebody’s butt is grassed when they get back down here.

Well you can see what they had done in the image above. They had already drawn all over Australia with a white permanent Magic marker dividing the country up into sections. They had sections for who had the most beer drinkers, that’s the spot down in the lower right hand corner where it’s almost all white, a section for how many Australians who had actually seen a wild Koala bear, zoos didn’t count. How many really carried those big knives and actually said “That’s not a knife, this is a knife” pronouncing knife like knoife, and which ones thought Great White sharks were like totally their best friends ever and would swim with them whenever they were asked to. That would be those big blue areas in the middle of the country. We understand the sun shines there every single day and it’s really hot so that could explain that lapse in good judgment.

We finally got a hold of the crew later in the morning and gave them a stern talking to. However the damage was done. We told them to get back there and start cleaning that marker off the place but they said “Sorry, no can do, we ‘re already over Indonesia and by the time we make another circuit the marker would be so dry there was no way it was coming off.” then they started that “Can’t hear you” crap again. Man that’s irritating. Now we ‘ve got to apologize to the whole damn  Australian country explaining that we did it, but we didn’t mean it. ‘Sorry it was an April Fools joke that went awry.” Like they’re going to buy that. So much for our credibility.

To indicate our displeasure with the crew up there in Institute1 we have informed them that their next shipment of oxygen will be a week and a half late, oops sorry, our bad. Maybe they’ll pay attention to the rules next  time. Actually our guy over at Mission Control says they only have enough air left for five days. That could get dicey.

The Institute1,our space station, was designed and constructed right here on The Institute’s grounds. Since our Space Grant had not come through for the fourth time in a row we decided to tackle the job ourselves and build it out of available funds. We were able to get five of those 40′ shipping containers, a tuff shed, some of that 8′ diameter sewer pipe they bury in those subdivisions and a huge deal on off-brand duck tape from our local hardware store.

Picture the five storage containers joined at each corner forming a pentagram with the tuff shed to store the oxygen tanks and other explosives suspended in the middle of the pentagram by the 8’ sewer pipe and all joined together by massive wraps of duck tape and you’ve got a picture of what the Institute1 looks like. Of course there are holes cut in the roof of the storage containers for venting things that have  to be vented, bathroom areas, the area around the pellet stove, and so on. There are also Plexiglas viewing ports around the outside perimeter of the station so they can take pictures, use that pricey single tube 16x telescope we got when Wal-Mart had their sale, and to wave and make faces at the Russians as they go whizzing past in their fancy new space station, the Ублюдок!!!.

If we can keep the Aussie’s from going ballistic over the white marker thing we may not have done our space program irreparable harm. And we’ve got to get our new spaceship, the “Flying Flounder” up there to delivery the next load of oxygen bottles and pick up the empties. The late fees on returning those are horrendous so things have to proceed as normal, otherwise we have to consider pulling the plug on our entire “Visit Space – The Place Where Nothing Is” program. That would set back our entire Scientific Mission structure weeks and weeks if not months.

So one thing we can be thankful for is except for our friends down under, we didn’t play any practical jokes on the rest of the world. That’s a relief. So if anybody from The Institute says “Happy April Fools Day!” to you, just ignore them.

The Final Frontier

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We have received just under a zillion letters asking about The Institutes ongoing space program. Rather than post each one here we have chosen one letter out of the overstuffed mailbags left leaning on the gate post down at the bottom of the hill. It is from one of our many admirers in Oasis, New Mexico.

“Dear  Director, I just wanted to thank you for the lovely weekend we had. You were so gallant, bringing flowers, wine, reserving our table at Arby’s. I still remember the emergency room visit due to the carbon monoxide leak you had  in the jeep. I’m sorry you almost died but then we shouldn’t have been parked that far out of town. I’m writing this letter because I think we have a “little’ problem as I have not been visited by Mother’s natures gift to women in three months and thought you should (Note: The beginning of this note has been redacted due to its personal nature and continues below regarding our Space program.)

I know you have been working really hard on getting the launch vehicle ready for its maiden flight. I hope my small donation of welding the gantry, it was my first real welding experience since I graduated from County Tech, I gave you helps in your efforts to explore space and its time continuum thingy you talked about. That spark that started the fire and burned down the control center was unfortunate, but those things happen when you weld in knee-high grass. You were good about it though. You seemed so smart. That ‘s why I decided to let you (Note: Sorry, didn’t catch that the first time I reread this.)

I drove by the Space Port the other day and noticed that part of the gantry, is that the right word?, had fallen down, I guess I should have ‘tacked’ it more, that’s welding talk, hon, and one of the letters in America was crooked. When are you coming back down here to work on it? We really, really need to talk, I think that our little problem (Note: the rest of the letter doesn’t pertain to our Space program so I’m just going to leave it off. She ends with,)

I miss you terribly and hope that your extra government funding comes through so you can send this ship up into the heavens. I’m thinking about your offer to be the first woman in space from New Mexico and the honor that would be but I’m a little concerned about the rust around the  engine compartment, is that supposed to be there? Hoping to see you soon, and I mean soon, yours truly,

Spacey in New Mexico.”

Well, we don’t have an answer for Spacey as she obvious has us confused with some other space ship builder and cosmos explorer. Unfortunately we get letters like this periodically but that’s the price of fame. We hope everything works out ok for her and she finds the right space explorer to help her with her problems. But I have no recollection of anyone in New Mexico named Spacey and now that I look more closely at the picture I think that isn’t even our space vehicle. Ours had USA on the side, I remember, our letters were the really neat wooden ones with the routed edges because we got a deal on them from Home Depot, not those plastic cheap ones they used for America on this spaceship, and it was pointed up more. Anyway thank you for all your cards and letters and remember to include us in your last bequests when you make out  your will. We could use the funding for more programs like this one.