Monday, August 6 12:00 AM ET

New Ship Can Reach
Faster-Than-Light Speeds

Burbank, CA - A team of scientists working for the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works plant has unveiled a prototype spacecraft which they claim can travel faster than light.

The head of the team, physicist James Krastin described the challenges involved with creating a viable design.   "For years, we'd been reverse-engineering UFOs, but the speeds we were able to reach just weren't fast enough.  It was when a junior member of our team suggested that we reverse-engineer ships from science fiction movies and novels that we had our first major breakthrough," said Krastin.

According to Krastin, Einstein's ideas about faster-than-light travel just don't play out in the real world.   "We were disappointed to learn that time travel was not possible with faster-than-light travel.  It turns out that you just go REALLY fast, but not faster than time. It's more like teleporting or tesseracting between two points."

The team tested their prototype ship in secret last fall, sending astronaut Robert Lowen on a trip to Vega.  He returned shortly after he left, smelling of Vegan whiskey and displaying symptoms of a previously-undocumented STD.

When asked how this ship was fundamentally different from ships like the space shuttles and Space Ship One, Krastin explained the innovations used by his team's ship.   "We increased the size of the speedometer and accelerator to facilitate higher speed and acceleration, the same principle that makes a Porsche faster than a Honda Civic.  Then someone had the idea to paint a racing stripe on the side, which we all thought was pretty cool."

It should be noted that Krastin and several members of his team are multiple-lottery winners and are heavily invested in the stock market. LMT stock rose more than 150 points after the team's announcement.