Death Marshall Fifi Magno Ether Frozen Chicken Rail Gun & Sydney 2000 Olympic Torch Lighter

Unimoosedyne Con Technologies Group (Bringing you next Wednesdays technology the day after tomorrow) first developed the Death Marshall Fifi Magno Ether Frozen Chicken Rail Gun as part of the Ronald Reagan administration “Star Wars” orbital defense technology initative. However, the cold war ended, and we’ve had this thing sitting around doing nothing. So we’ve proposed to use the DMFMEFGCRG as the Sydney 2000 Olympic torch lighter.

The DMFMEFCRG & S2kOTL is based on rail gun technology. You take something with a magnetic charge and suspend it in mid air using very powerful magnets (also known as Induction Coils). After setting up a long track of these magnets (around 5 miles), you then get the ring in front of the object to “attract” the object and the ring behind to “repel” the magnetically charged object. Using a high speed computer, you make it so that as soon as the object is attracted into the ring in front, it switches to “repel”, and the ring in front of that starts attracting… Repeat. Eventually, your object,. which only is affected by air resistance (remember the object is floating in the middle of these rings) can be accelerated to tremendous speeds. Using very sensitive “fine acceleration” magnets (see Overhead Track View below), you can then set your trajectory to intercept anything in low earth orbit, or aim at a sub-orbital destination anywhere in the world (there are some lateral limits based on the compass orientation of the firing end of the rail track).

Using patented technology, UMCTG has developed a rail gun that uses chickens, frozen to a few degrees above absolute zero which achieve superconductivity and hence can maintain an electic charge. This takes the ordinary frozen chicken, and converts it to a kinetic weapon of awesome destructive power, which is completely bio-degradable, environmentally friendly, leaves no radioactive fallout, and is based on a renewable resource. UMCTG is proud to use only the finest, free range chickens (no battery chickens) in it’s rail gun technology.

For the Sydney 2000 Olympics, we are planning to coat the chicken in high explosive phosphate. Upon achieving sub-orbital velocity, the friction will cause the surface temperature of the chicken to increase dramatically. This in turn will make the phosphate to spontaneously combust, consuming the chicken in flames. UMCTG has refined this technology to the point that we can, without fail, time the complete immolation of the chicken to coincide with its arrival at the official Olympic torch in Sydney, lighting the torch, but without leaving any trace of the chicken, it’s telemetry package, or electronic infrastructure except approximately .0035 grams of harmless ash.

The DMFMEFCRG & S2kOTL is to be mounted in Olympus Greece, home of the ancient Olympic games. From there the ancient ceremony of lighting the Olympic flame from pure sunlight will be used to trigger a photo-optical initiator, which will then launch the frozen chicken towards Sydney Australia, culminating in it’s arrival and lighting the torch during the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Games.   The Unimoosdyne Con Technologies Group is pleased to submit this proposal for the Sydney 2000 Olympic games Official Torch Lighter, and suspect that the sight of a brightly glowing frozen chicken re-entering the atmosphere at suborbital velocities over the Olympic Stadium would be a spectacle never to be repeated. Unimoosdyne Con Technologies Group Bringing you next Wednesday's Technology the day after Tommorow.

The Really Fine Print: Of course, if you believe ANY of this bovine excrement, seek professional therapy immediately. This information is provided soley as humor for our friends and people who have WAY to much time on their hands... Thanks to Paul Preuss for providing the diagrams in his book “Arthur C. Clarke’s Venus Prime - Volume 2 Maelstrom” - an excellent read, highly recommended. Thanks to Marlin for the awesome UMCTG Logo, the Death Marshall himself for the DMFMEFCRG&S2kOTL logo, and the PartyMan for suggesting that I do this - Buddah :).