NASA Mission Uses Technology Perfected by ABC during the Carter Administration

Who knew that the recently launched Dawn asteroid probe’s ion-drive engines use technology that NASA reverse-engineered from Star Wars? We’re not kidding—the “TIE” in TIE fighter stands for “twin ion engine.” Actually, the design was developed by Nazi rocket scientist, UFO booster, and ultra-nationalist German right-winger Hermann Oberth (so there, don’t you wish George Lucas had thought it up?). Dawn has three of these babies, but still takes four days to accelerate from 0-60 mph, scarcely enough to keep Luke from blowing up the Death Star, much less redefining the future of interstellar travel. Devotees of the 1979 Andy Griffith vehicle Salvage 1, whose number may not even include Griffith himself, will recall that this gradual-acceleration gambit (called the “Trans-Linear Vector Principle,” and we dare the brain trust at JPL to do any better) was what enabled a fortune-hunting junkyard owner to journey from Earth to the Moon in order to recover the priceless artifacts that the Apollo astronauts left behind, such as Alan Shepard’s golf balls.