ThrowbackThursday: Bad Piggies Space Program

Bad Piggies - Pigineering

It’s Throwback Thursday tomorrow and for this week’s special “repork” we bring you some long-promised but never posted news of the Bacon Space Program, where pigs aim for the stars in a mostly-futile bid to boldly go where no snout has oinked before, a million pounds of liquid hydrogen powered puns most definitely intended.

The desire to escape Piggy Island and its hostile environment is nothing new. In fact, there might be more than a few valid reasons: –

  • Escape Angry Bird attacks;
  • Seek out new animal friends, like sheep. Sheep look like walking pillows and don’t attack pigs. Sheep are cool, especially Shaun!;
  • Not liking the Royal Fatness present government;
  • Discover, track & mine Near-Egg-Objects (i.e., Eggsteroids) in the interest of expanding gluttony horizons.
  • Fat Pig ate all the food, so for the sake of future generations we have to hide our food on Mars where the Fat Pig’s voracious appetite can’t create another a-pork-calyptic wasteland.
  • To boldly go, where no snout has oinked before.
  • Curiosity may be fatal to cats, but not pigs. You’ve never seen anyone say, “Curiosity killed a pig” do you? It must be safe for pigs to go aimlessly blasting around the Solar System then.
  • Everything space related is awesome. Seriously, who doesn’t like soaring into the heavens on a pillar of fire!
  • The skin of a green pig is rich in chlorophyll and thus Bad Piggies are capable of photosynthesis. A large, fat pig with its own internal atmosphere should be (in my wildest dreams) capable of self-sustained life in deep space, utilizing flatulence as a propulsive mechanism. Every flatulence has an equal and opposite reaction to all bystanders and a particularly pungent one could have the same effect on space-time as a warp drive.
  • Steal Angry Birds’ eggs by way of aero-ballistic insertion, diving vertically upon the Angry Birds’ Nests whist riding a missile “Dr. Strangelove” style.

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Angry Birds Toons Crash Test Piggies

Corporal Pig applies Vertical Envelopment strategy upon the ‘Nest.

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As you can see, there are many reasons why we invest so much in this money wasting scandal grand venture to put bacon and egg permanently into space cuisine.

This article about the Bacon Space Program is definitely long overdue, considering we pigs have been secretly working on building Star Destroyers in the dead of night, which is like the most awesome excuse ever for a piglet to tell to a furious Moustache Pig after reporting to class late the next morning.

But that’s alright, because the Bacon Space Program, despite its years of existence and billions of dollars of wasted money invested, has not managed to put a single thing into orbit. I’m serious, we’re not even at Sputnik 1 in the space race chronology. In the meantime, NASA is currently demonstrating the capability to roam as far as Curiosity can go.

• • •

Bad Piggies Mars Curiosity Rover

Boldly Stealing Eggs, Where No Snout Has Oinked Before!

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It has been discussed that the vast gulf of progress between the two space agencies could be compared to a simple difference in developmental philosophy: NASA invests in large scale, next-generation technology that despite the initial development risks, manage to pay vast dividends in the long run. Space-derived technologies had made possible a great number of today’s modern conveniences.

Our Bacon Space Program, on the other hand, relies on duct-taping a great many primitive components together and hope they all play nice as a system. Duct tape and super glue fixes all things, right?

• • •

Angry Birds Toons Crash Test Piggies

“Prepare for LUNCH!” hollered the Corporal Pig, as he set alight the fuze to the mighty PORK CHOP tactical ballis-pig missile, proudly made by the lowest bidder.

• • •

As history proves, the answer is a resounding “no”. Bolting together many small rocket engines onto the same vehicle stage is not a particularly sound engineering strategy, as the failed Russian N-1 moon rocket program would show. No matter how good those little fireworks rockets are individually or in small numbers, one cannot ride with the Valkyries (how’s this for mood music!) on an insanely complex assembly of low powered rockets that’s bound to fall apart in an uncontrollable spectacle of external combustion.

• • •

• • •

What the Bad Piggies Space Program sorely needed from the get-go was a type of liquid fuelled rocket engine. Liquid fuelled rockets have the tendency to be heavier than a solid rocket stage but they burn as long as you have fuel and oxidizer left in the tanks. And you could fill the majority of a vehicle with liquid propellants! Having a liquid engine and companion fuel tank components in Bad Piggies would have easily solved the glaring issue of having to separate multiple stages of expended solid boosters within the span of a few seconds.

Many pigineers have shook their heads at the primitive, Victorian-era levels of technology utilized in our poor man’s pig’s excuse of a “space program”, and stormed out of Mission Control in disgust, vowing to go back to the “honest productive labour” of attempting to steal eggs from Angry Birds’ Nests in a Starship Troopers style en masse display of conventional beak to snout combat. That’s their loss.

• • •

• • •

For you see, the inability to make Bad Piggies parts work like larger scale versions of the same object in real life, does not stop the enterprising pigineer from reinventing an equivalent of a larger scaled object with true to life capability using different parts.

Those puny fireworks won’t get a vehicle far, but with their insane power to mass ratio, they’re great for imparting a great boost of speed for the first crucial seconds of a rocket’s flight skywards. That’s what solid rocket boosters do on real rocket ships. They give a short boost to the vehicle for the first minute or minutes from launch, enabling the liquid fuelled core to fly faster and reach further out into the upper atmosphere before stage separation.

To simulate the presence of a sustainer engine that keeps said rocket going up, up and away, we utilised the simple combination of the tried and true American V-8 engine driving an airplane propeller. It may not look particularly realistic or proper, but the new “hybrid” rockets have far greater range and payload than the early ballistic missile experiments.

• • •

SpaceX Falcon 9R

Schematics of the “Bacon 9R” Rocket.

• • •

Interestingly, such hybrid aircraft/rocket setups were themselves quite significant in the early Jet Age of Earth. There were quite a number of rocket-boosted jet aircraft that were utilized for speed and altitude record attempts, starting from the aptly named Douglas Skyrocket. While such a concept for a 21st Century fighter aircraft may sound preposterous in an age where hover-capable stealth fighter jets are a reality, remember in the 1950s, jet propulsion was still in relative infancy and turbojet engines of the period tended to be slow to accelerate and had relatively limited thrust.

The addition of a rocket motor to produce a burst of high impulse power is thus a logical workaround to technological limitations, just like how on Piggy Island, the wacky V-8 powered “sustainer engine” is a major step forward in our quest to explore what lies above and beyond. While many of the above-featured fictional Bad Piggies spacecraft were built in 2013, the more recent “Bacon 9R” re-usable first stage was designed similarly to the “Alpha Launcher” utilized in our International Space Station module launch parody here:

• • •

• • •

The End

Next week in Bad Piggies “Bacon Space Program”, we construct a replica of the famously controversial “Moonraker” Space Shuttle mid-air launch and discuss the future of King Pig’s Galactic Empire!

The author of this article is not a real rocket scientist, astronaut or engineer. In fact, the author knows absolutely nothing about real space programs but is very good at conjuring up enough relevant nonsense to convince Corporal Pig to divert his prized ballistic missile funding towards commencing construction of a Death Star in the year 2016 peaceful exploration of the cosmos.

Visit our Facepork Page, Subscribe to YouSnout and check out Trotter for random updates!

In the meantime we note Objective No. 2 of the Bacon Space Program (Quote: To seek out new animal friends) had been completed, with reference to Angry Birds Toons: The Truce.

Sheep in Angry Birds Toons

The Sheep says “Meeeeeh!” to the Inter-Farm Pig-Sheep Alliance Against Angry Bird Aggression.

Comments (11)

Rank: Explosive with 2360 points
By Savekechoow! (@saavekechow)

I don’t understand
Is this a future update?

Rank: Well Traveled with 1965 points
By Mike (@erika-rieger)

I don’t Think so there just talking about their past inventions

Rank: Explosive with 2470 points
By Les Toreadors (@les-toreadors)

Yes, #ThrowbackThursday is all about retro stuff :)

Rank: Shooter with 800 points
By Danke_ (@danke)

It’s a parody about the space program, and it shows the limitless possibilities of Bad Piggies.

Rank: Well Traveled with 1965 points
By Mike (@erika-rieger)

Ok gotcha

Rank: Gold Flinger with 9660 points
By Dr. Omega (@dr-omega)

While we are on the topic, let’s not forget Finland’s successful Moon landing, as seen in the first Angry Birds Rio 2 trailer:
http://i.imgur.com/SBDWtuQ.png

Rank: Explosive with 2470 points
By Les Toreadors (@les-toreadors)

Finland’s Moon Landing! Hilarious. Reminded me of the movie Iron Sky which had a Finnish producer and accompanying sense of humor :)

Rank: Sling God with 36680 points
By Joey (@joeyba)

Indeed, this Moon Landing is hilarious :)

Rank: Sling God with 70590 points
By wrw01 (@wrw01)

The flying machine inventions are amazing. Ingenuity at its finest!!!! But what is really outstanding and entertaining are the write-ups that accompany the videos. Just down right funny and an expression of a great sense of wit.

Rank: Explosive with 2055 points
By rost (@rost)

Love it!! I’m a HUGE space technology guy, and also Bad Piggies. Who would ever think those things would come together? Awesome! :D

Rank: Sling God with 26000 points
By Uncle B (@uncle-b)

As to be expected, more AWESOME creations from the Pigengineering Crew !!!
I’m so delighted that Pigengineering is part of the AngryBirdsNest Family.

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