Strong winds have kept the space shuttle Discovery grounded, and while this morning's wind conditions were picture perfect, a large tortoise was seen in the general vicinity of the vehicle pad and NASA quickly scrapped plans for today's launch.
"You just can't be too careful," Meteorologist Scott Kelly told a hastily called press conference, adding that "Hardshelled creatures are not my area of expertise but the bosses told us all to be on the lookout for anything strange so as soon as I saw the thing I smacked the NO-GO button as hard as I could..."
NASA officials have indeed reiterated the need for caution at all costs, and are working overtime to determine if the shell of a tortoise would interfere with the all-important foam heat shields, and have tentatively suggested that a reasonably diminutive tortoise would not pose much of a problem and are using computer simulations to nail down precisely how large such a creature need be to forestall future shuttle launches.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffen added that by Tuesday he was certain a Tortoise-Identification-Abstraction would be available that could automatically shut down a launch that was in danger of sucking one huge ass tortoise shell up along with it.
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