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http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/films/wrongtrousers/about.html Beware our walking leg overlords!

...to get our hands on good cheese.

Not according to these guys.

Hopefully people will realize how important the space program is, but something tells me that it won't be soon, and it won't be until we get something inspiring. Deep space voyages, while important, won't inspire anyone. Landing on the Moon or Mars? That will.

The biggest impediment to that PR vision is keeping the spam in the can alive to both land on the surface of Mars, in particular, and return to earth. Looking over the historical evidence, http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/log/, it does not give a sense that we have a good handle on how to manage risk associated with unmanned science missions to Mars, let alone a manned missions which will require much more complexity. About half of all missions to Mars that have been attempted have failed. Killing people en route or crashing people on the surface of Mars does absolutely no good, and will likely yield the opposite of the desired PR outcome. I, for one, would like to see much better accounting for, and management of, the risk associated with both current unmanned Mars missions before attempting a simple PR stunt involving people. Science for the sake of science has it's place, and one is risk mitigation. And since everyone knows the moon is made of cheese http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/films/granddayout/, so there is no need to go back there :)

Not as bad as when I heard "British Rocketman" and immediately thought of Wallace and Gromit. Though that was certainly assisted by the mention of "A Grand Day Out" in the article title.

Zoom right into the moon. Wallace was right, the moon really is made out of cheese!

Zoom right into the moon. Wallace was right, the moon really is made out of cheese!

I think you'll find it's made of cheese.
I have it on good authority...

> That sounds like Wallace & Gromit: Cracking Contraptions. The shorts were shown in the US on Atom films in a low resolution format

It looks like you can find them online, courtesy of the BBC.

I have two problems with the DVD format: compression artifacts and low-level pixel dithering [...]

Actually, you have three problems. If you're new to DVD, you may not know about the 'region' nonsense. Simply put: if you buy a disc in Europe, forget about playing it in the US, and vice-versa.

There is no technical reason for this. It's pure marketing BS. However, there are DVD players on the market which make it possible to circumvent the region encoding. You may want to consider one of these...

Am I the only person to have visions of Gromit frantically laying track in front of this new train missile as it heads towards it target ??