Project Snap Decision

Meeting Minutes at NASA Headquarters

BILL NELSON, Director of NASA: Moving on to item number four, marketing initiatives. I'll turn the floor over to Stevie Mugatu. Stevie?

STEVIE MUGATU, Head of Marketing: Thank you Mr. Nelson. My team and I have a really exciting program to pitch you all. We believe that this idea is going to skyrocket NASA back into the future, where it belongs. Pun shamelessly intended.

Mugatu pauses. The room is silent.

MUGATU: Right. These days, social media determines whether a company succeeds or fades into oblivion. To be relevant, social media is non-negotiable—no matter the prior prestige of the institution. Platforms such as TikTok and Twitter explode in engagement when there is a compelling love story playing out before them. Take HBO's House of the Dragon, for instance: millions of tweets and TikTok videos were uploaded within minutes of an episode being released. And what was the basis of this massive response? To root for a young girl and her uncle hooking up. Collective pining, or "shipping"—the colloquial term—holds the attention of the general public like little else.

NELSON: Okay Stevie, so we need some steamy incest to get funding for NASA again? Is that what you're suggesting?

MUGATU: NASA will have the next best thing to dragon riding uncle-fuckers, Mr. Sellman. We will have the age old pairing that everyone can and desperately wishes to root for: a celebrity and a normal person. My team and I are proposing we hire a reality television crew to film a celebrity and regular person training to become astronauts. Then, we'll actually send them to space. What we won't advertise explicitly, but will imply, is that the ultimate goal is for a romance to form between these individuals.

RORY ASHCROFT, Counsel: Ms. Mugatu, how could we, in good conscience send a "regular person" as you say and a celebrity into space? We're grasping at the last dregs of our funding and the cost and liability to do so would be enormous!

MUGATU: With all due respect, Ms. Ashcroft, I believe NASA has no choice but to take a risk at this point. But to assuage your concerns, I have thought this through. Firstly, our normal person would be one of our own, someone highly educated and familiar with NASA, physics, and aerospace engineering. Our celebrity has been selected by my team, and we hope you are as excited about the choice as we are. We propose none other than former quarterback of the Bengals, Joe Burreaux.

Mugatu pauses, as though awaiting an outburst of excitement from the room. Twelve stoic faces gaze back at her expectantly.

MUGATU: Allow me to explain our choice: Burreaux has been out for a little over a year from a catastrophic knee injury. However, while a career in football is now an impossibility, he does possess an excellent academic background in biology and mechanical engineering. Not only do his accolades and grit from football prove he'd be an excellent candidate, but he has advertised over and again in the media his deep love and appreciation for space. He's already an internet phenomenon, with fan edits being produced daily, despite his fade from the public eye since his injury. His manager is willing to take a bargain, given the fact his career in football has irrevocably ceased. Also, from the feelers we've sent out to HBO and Netflix, he is hot enough to fetch us an easy couple hundred-million-dollar deal, with room to negotiate. This sum would only be the beginning for us, especially if we can capture the hiveminds of TikTok and Twitter.

NELSON: This is quite compelling, Stevie. But who would be the participant on the inside of NASA?

MUGATU: It would have to be Camden Reynolds, Mr. Nelson.