Bezos, Musk, Branson Submit Proposal To IOC

ANN April 1 Special Edition

Three giants in the commercial space industry have proposed precision rocket landings to the International Olympic Committee as a potential sport for the 2020 Summer Games to be held in Tokyo, Japan.

The idea is being pitched by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson. In a copy of the proposal leaked to ANN, the three say that the Olympics needs to be about more than athletics, and that a competition like precision rocket landings would be a way for the IOC to bring new competitors into the fold as well as promote STEM education worldwide.

The competition would consist of a launch that inserts an object into orbit and then recovers the booster at a precise spot. The closest to the spot would be deemed the winner of the competition. Difficulty points would be taken into consideration for the size of the object and the precision with which it is inserted into orbit.

Bezos said that while he currently does not have a system that can deliver an object into orbit, the company should be making orbital insertions by the time the 2020 games roll around. “We were first, and you have to walk before you can run,” Bezos said. “And we’ve not had any ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’ issues in our program like some other rocketeers have.”

Musk said that there should be both land and water divisions for the competition. “In Japan, that’s easy,” Musk said. “It’s a bunch of islands, after all. We can get our target barge out off the coast, and will even donate its use for the ocean landing competition.”

Sir Richard Branson said vertical launch is not a defining factor. “We have a recoverable booster that can be carried by LauncherOne in development,” he said. “Besides, it’s something else on which I can slap the name ‘Virgin’. I’m sure the IOC would be open to selling naming rights to the competition.”

The Japanese Olympic Committee has petitioned the National Diet to increase incentives for commercial space operations so that they can be included in the competition. A Russian government insider not authorized to speak to the media told ANN that the country would simply form a shell corporation to develop their own recoverable booster. “Russian Olympic Athletes have been government employees for almost as long as there have been Olympic Games,” he said. “There is no reason that this should be any different. I’m sure we have some 1970s technology that we can repurpose for this event … just like we’re carrying your astronauts to ISS in 1970s-style spacecraft.”

Then, thinking the mic was off, the Russian chortled “Bwa-ha-ha-ha.”

(Images from file)

FMI: www.olympic.org/ioc