Sun Stroke

The flight of the Icarus

BOLT UPRIGHT: I’m Bolt Upright, and this is Received Opinion.

[Music. Screen behind UPRIGHT: The faces and names of seven smiling white guys, with a shot of a foil-covered spacecraft in the center, with the legend SLIPPED THE SURLY BONDS.]

Today we all mourn the deaths of those seven brave billionaires who were aboard the spacecraft Icarus when it tragically burned up on its way to the sun. Some say this was simply an unfortunate miscalculation on the part of scientists and engineers at Brandsoak, the company that created Icarus and sent the seven amateur astronauts on what was advertised as the first-ever solar orbital flight. Just days ago Brandsoak CEO Brad Smup called the Icarus a miracle of modern technology, outstripping anything that NASA had ever come up with.

[Insert: Footage of SMUP, a 25ish beardo wearing a Han Shot First T-shirt, at a press conference podium.]

SMUP: NASA is just played out. I mean, they’re big government, right, just so cautious and just, like, no. Whereas we [pounds chest] — we have the greatest brains and hearts and guts and no barriers, no boundaries, no [makes air quotes] “safety regulations” stopping us from doing the thing, you know, just, just pure total balls-out creative brilliance. And let me tell you, these seven mofos, sure they’re brave, no question, but they’re also men who made fortunes betting on what looked like long shots to other people, but they weren’t long shots to them, because men like that, they just look at a thing like this and they know, they just know, I mean they’re like divining rods for success. So when we showed them the blueprints they said, “OK, so, people say you can’t fly so close to the sun? Challenge! Accepted!” Boo-yah!

[Back to UPRIGHT, seated at the Received Opinion decision desk with weedy, elbow-patched intellectual JED SCHLIMAZEL; power-suited, venture capital haircut slicker VARIETY JENKS; and one-eyed Republican Congressman DAN CRENSHAW.]

UPRIGHT: Smup could not be reached for comment but said in a statement that he had recently converted to Catholicism and would personally pray a novena for each one of the fallen men. We turn now to entrepreneur Variety Jenks, who we understand is a very close friend to Smup and to, well, I should say was a close friend to, all seven of the victims. Variety, there has been talk that Brandsoak should have known the Icarus would burn up as soon as it came within a million miles of the sun, that no heat shield known to science could withstand —

JENKS: Let me stop you right there, Bolt. You say “no heat shield known to science.” But does science know everything? I mean science has been telling us for years that the earth is getting warmer. Yet here I am wearing a light wool suit! It’s this kind of small-minded safe-space thinking that is ruining our country, and I say these men, all close personal friends of mine, are heroes and that their example will lead others on a conquest of the sun within the decade!

UPRIGHT: Jed Schlimazel, I understand one of your degrees is in astrophysics, what do you say?

SCHLIMAZEL: What can I say? It’s widely known that the most advanced heat shield can withstand maybe 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — an orbit of the sun would expose you to roughly a million degrees!  I mean it’s ridiculous. And keep in mind Brandsoak never showed anyone how its technology would be make up the difference. They just flatly refused. Frankly the CEO of Brandsoak shouldn’t be praying novenas, he should be in jail.

JENKS: It’s no surprise that Democrat critics would try to blame American business for this tragic event, and even less of a surprise that they would try to criminalize it, just as they did with the January 6 protestors and are trying to do now with Donald Trump. But I think ordinary Americans see through it, just as they know why Jed Schlimazel is really against novenas.

SCHLIMAZEL: [Sighs] Every time.

BOLT UPRIGHT: Congressman Crenshaw, I understand you blame the incineration of the Icarus on President Biden. Why?

CRENSHAW: Bolt, we know that most of the criminal activity in the United States is traceable to the Biden Crime Family. But this represents a new low. President Biden was aware of this flight, there are several photographs of him looking up at the sky, and he knew that lives were at stake, yet he did not have spacecraft at the ready to rescue these brave private individuals, all of them with at least dual citizenship including the United States, in case something went wrong, and we are seeing the consequences now.

UPRIGHT: Congressman, sorry to interrupt, but wasn’t the whole point of this fully privatized space flight to circumvent the government? We just heard Brad Smup talk about how useless NASA was.

CRENSHAW: Bolt, the idea of limited government is not to privatize the risks — it’s to privatize the gains. That’s just economics 101.   

UPRIGHT: Uh huh. And I assume you’ll be impeaching the President for this?

CRENSHAW: Naturally.

UPRIGHT: And we’ll have to leave it there. This is Bolt Upright for Received Opinion. Stay tuned for live coverage of Elon Musk’s latest successful rocket launch, or disappointing but expected launchpad explosion, depending.