Four brave Space Force Guardians have come up on orders to deploy to the sun with the aim of gathering samples for environmental research. Photo by Coffee or Die magazine.
Trainees in the Space Force's inaugural basic training class were surprised to learn on Tuesday that their first mission with the youngest branch of the United States military would be a historic, pioneering deployment to the fiery hellscape that is the sun.
“What!? God, no! We’ll die!” Spc. Joy Hernandez of Destin, Florida, said moments after learning that she, along with three other Guardians from her basic training cycle, had been tapped for the first “solar landing” ever attempted in human history. “This has to be a joke. This is a joke, right?”
The decision to send Guardians to the sun comes on the heels of a controversial move by Congress to purchase a fleet of purpose-built “Solar Landers” from aerospace and defense contractor Mockheed Lartin. Critics of the decision said the $4.5 billion purchase was made without any clear logic and done only to appease the bloodthirsty beast that is the American military-industrial complex and to line the pockets of a few greedy congressmen.
Coffee or Die Magazine reached out to several congressmen involved in the deal, but all declined to provide comments for this article, saying they were currently “out of cell range” while traveling the world on their private yachts.
The cutting-edge Solar Landers inexplicably developed by Mockheed Lartin are state-of-the-art remote-controlled transport drones designed to resist intense heat while approaching the sun with their human cargo. A legal disclaimer on Mockheed Lartin’s website states that the Solar Landers are designed to withstand the immense heat of the sun but notes that the company cannot guarantee that they are actually capable of doing so.
According to a Pentagon official who spoke to Coffee or Die on the condition of anonymity, the Guardians assigned to the historic mission will ship out immediately after they graduate basic training. Their primary task, the official said, would be to recover samples of Earth’s favorite star to figure out why it's been so darn hot lately.
“The sun doesn’t even have a fucking surface you can walk on,” said Spc. Brian Hotchkins, reflecting on the mission as he desperately pounded on a window in an attempt to liberate himself from the barracks where he and his fellow sun-bound comrades are currently being held against their will. “Look at the ‘sample containers’ they gave us. They’re Ziploc baggies. How in the fuck are you going to put a piece of the sun in this? They don't expect us to come back from this. I’m so fucking dead.”
When asked whether the upcoming mission changed his opinion of the Space Force, Hotchkins took a quick break from clawing at the sealed barracks door and stated, “I knew I should have joined the Marines.”
Satire disclaimer: This article is a work of satire. It's fiction. The events depicted in this article did not actually happen. The Space Force is not sending Guardians on a one-way trip to the sun ... yet.
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Eric Miller is a former Army Combat Medic from Parkersburg, West Virginia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and has worked with homeless populations and veteran services throughout the state. He is an avid outdoorsman and has recently become interested in woodworking.
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