For immediate release - 8 July 2025

by: J. Richard Jacobs, staff reporter, The Times of Tasmania

At a press conference held early this morning, Nick Birdensum, president of SaniTroll, the world's only supplier of sterilized shark bait, announced the company's entry into the private sector's race for space.

Birdensum said the company's founder and CEO, Glasov Swill, has named Dr. Billy Bob Sakituya to head the endeavor. "The mission," Birdensum said, "is to land a colonizing crew on the sun by 2027. We realize this is a challenging time-line, but choosing the sun provides so many cost and time saving elements that the 2027 deadline is realistic. First, our target isn't moving around like them other places, Mars and Europe [sic] fer example. That will make it much easier to hit. Second, it is downhill from here, which means we will need much less fuel to make the trip. The climate is warmer there, meaning less payload will be taken up by heating equipment for the LSS, and, according to Dr. Sakituya, the sun's rapid rotation means that temperatures on the night side of the sun will be warmer, too."

Birdensum went on to say that the lack of craters on the sun proves that it is not the target of asteroids, comets, and general space debris like other bodies in the solar system, so it should be a safer place to be in the future.

When pressed for information about the crew, Birdensum only said they have no volunteers at present, but he believes that will change when knowledge of the project becomes more widespread.

Now, I suspect you think I was joking with this, and I was, but there is a serious side as well. It's a rather extreme idea, but it's just on the edge of possible. Isaac Arthur makes a lot of fascinating videos, but this one is....