Asteroid Harvesting
Explanation
The Joke
Two aliens have successfully brought a ten-kilometer-wide asteroid into lunar orbit for harvesting. Now they just need to nudge a little piece toward a soft landing on Earth. But one of them is frustrated because a "stupid piece of gum" is stuck under the gas pedal. Two dinosaurs on Earth look up and say "Oh boy" and "I hope it goes okay!"
The Humor
The comic reimagines the asteroid impact that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (the Chicxulub impactor, approximately 66 million years ago) as a mundane accident caused by alien incompetence -- specifically, a piece of chewing gum stuck under a gas pedal. The contrast between the catastrophic, world-ending event and the trivially stupid cause is the core of the joke. The dinosaurs on Earth, blissfully unaware that they are about to be wiped out, add dramatic irony by expressing mild optimism about the incoming asteroid. The comic plays on the real scientific concept of asteroid mining and redirecting asteroids, but turns it into a slapstick disaster caused by poor vehicle maintenance.
References
- The Chicxulub impact occurred approximately 66 million years ago when a roughly 10-kilometer-wide asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula, leading to the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs (the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event).
- Asteroid mining is a real proposed concept in which asteroids would be captured and their mineral resources extracted, a topic of serious discussion in space exploration circles.