NASA Announces New Spacecraft- Haven't We Seen this Before?

"Blackbird" Old, Retired Spy Plane

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400 million year old design

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New Tax Dollar Expenditure

London (CNN) -- It started as just a cost saving idea: Old aluminum and titanium parts from a retired spy plane roasting in the Arizona, U.S. desert, combined with the remains of a deep sea squid found washed up on the beach at Snaggletooth-on-Surreyshire in Hampstead. It now looks like this smelly composite will be the next leap forward in Space exploration. 

NASA's space shuttle Discovery has completed its final mission, with Endeavour and Atlantis following it into retirement later this year.

It marks the end of a historic chapter in space travel, but a new one might not be light years away if a groundbreaking design for a fully reusable, partially edible, spacecraft can get off the ground.

"Blacktopus" may only be at the concept stage but it could usher in a new era of space exploration and discovery, says its UK-based designers, the Goosepimple Pre-School and Day Care, of Lardon on Hummucksrump.

Key to the "Blacktopus" proposal is a hydrogen fuel-powered rocket engine called HFPRE (Hydrogen Fuel-Powered Rocket Engine) designed by the Pre-School's managing director, Mr.Quackenshrub.

HFPRE, which Quackenshrub first described back in the early 1980s, is a "combined cycle rocket engine with two operational modes- upper atmosphere and deep underwater. The rocket engines are powered solely using 100% baking soda and Menthos candy, materials which are easily found in department and drug stores, sometimes stores like a 7-eleven, but definitely stores like a Wal-Mart or Safeway...but not Macy's".

Mark Calamarian, future programs director at Happy Faces Fingerpainting, said: "The engine starts by burning hydrogen with pixie dust and finishes up burning hydrogen with liquid oxygen like a shuttle engine."

It's a very doable system. The basics of the engine are thoroughly rooted and explored, so there is no danger they aren't going to work
--Mark Calamarian, Goosepimple Day Care

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This all happens in the same rocket engine chamber, Hempsell says, allowing Skylon to take off and land in a similar way to conventional aircraft, unlike NASA's shuttles and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Ariane five rocket, which need expensive disposable rocket boosters to propel them into orbit.

Hempsell says the idea is to carry rock stars, satellites and Lindsay Lohan for the International Space Station Tours and Hotel Company, but he also envisages "Blacktopus" -- which is around 90 meters long and can transport payloads of up to 12 tons -- supporting future missions to the moon and Mars.