A blog dedicated to cheesemaking, cheese tasting and appreciation and all things cheese and dairy related, from a VIAC-certified urban cheesemaker.
By now you may have heard the news about SpaceX’s historic low-earth-orbit flight and docking with the International Space Station. Reader Tony S. just pointed me to this story about a top-secret payload on an earlier flight of this spacecraft in 2010 [Corrected from earlier version of this post that referred to this cheese as a payload on the most recent flight]. So was it spy technology? Human DNA to be blasted out into the infinite ether? Nope, it was a wheel of Le Brouere cheese:
SpaceX has unveiled the identity of the mystery payload packed aboard the Dragon spacecraft during yesterday’s orbital flight.
“Before the successful launch, voyage, and recovery of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, the first time in history a commercial company has recovered a spacecraft from orbit, reporters were buzzing with news of a ‘secret’payload’ stowed on board,” SpaceX announced in a statement.
“It was a payload so secret, SpaceXers made it Top Secret (think Val Kilmer 1984, not official US Government),” the company said.
“So what was inside the mystery package? Their tribute to Monty Python. A wheel of cheese.”
And on the off-chance that you haven’t seen it, here’s the original Cheese Shop sketch on YouTube.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, it looks like this was not referring to the most recent SpaceX flight, but to an earlier launch in 2010, apologies for the error.
