BPL-004, Experimental Outsourcing Mission To China, Part 2
Hard on the heels of its first successful Kickstarter project ( ), Brower Propulsion Laboratory Mission Planners have initiated another.
MISSION DESCRIPTION:
Everyone in the U.S. is familiar with "Chinese Food", and "Chinese Take-Out", especially mission planners at BPL, since that's all we can afford. Now BPL is going to be delivering Chinese food too! However, on this mission it will be real Chinese food ordered in America, and delivered in China, with a hand painted facsimile delivered back to the customer in the U.S., for maximum metaphorical and cultural exchange value! Confused? Read on-
The fourth full scale BPL mission will take as its subject "Delivery Systems", which is a commonly encountered aspect of Aerospace manufacturing. Always doing things on the cheap, The MicroAerospace Company will forego the manufacture of large booster rockets and complex propellant chemistries in favor of gouache paint and electric scooters. BPL is once again outsourcing its entire labor pool to China to make by hand a high quality product that is simultaneously American made and also Made in China. Exclusive to Kickstarter, the creation of this unique product will also cause numerous people to enjoy a delicious meal or two and engage in stimulating conversation.
MISSION BACKGROUND:
BPL prosecuted its first outsourcing mission in 2008, (see this website for mission details:). BPL CEO and head Decorator, Steven Brower, went to China intending to make watercolors in typical tourist fashion using our custom Aerospacey-grade watercolor box. These paintings were pre-sold in a clever ploy to legitimize the company by outsourcing its entire labor force (of one) while at the same time creating an American Made product. BPL's inadvertent interaction with students at the university he was visiting led to a lecture entitled "How To Start An Aerospace Company Without Really Knowing Anything". The lecture was delivered to 300 students and baffled faculty on 15 May, 2008. It was observed that many of these students were eager to talk, and that the things they said became more nuanced, sincere, poetic, and engaging when shaped within a mouthful of food. Large groups of these students were often assembled and fed by the visiting executive (and fellow visitors, it should be noted), at a staggeringly low cost to himself. The students could consume prodigious volumes of food, and the more they were fed, the more gregarious they became. Surprisingly, most of them found it extremely useful to simply spend a protracted period speaking English! It occurred to BPL management that it would be wise to be nice to these people, as they are likely to be our future employers...
MISSION DETAILS AND WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU:
BPL will organize meals that include as many students as we can assemble, and pay for them to gorge themselves, Applebee's - style. This will happen daily, or as often as possible during the month that BPL is conducting operations. BPL will then make a painting of the food consumed, and inscribe the painting with notes about topics of conversation and a description of the food itself, along with other pertinent data, such as temperature and horoscope. BPL's eager customers (that's you) may procure these paintings, thus becoming benefactors OF and participants IN the meals. Of course, BPL will realize a tidy profit on the backs of these poor children, thus satisfying our outsourcing goals. The paintings will finally be delivered at the end of the project. The long delivery process is necessary to ensure that lack of Backers does not equal unfed students and undaubed paintings. In other words, even if we don't realize that tidy profit, everyone eats and has a great time anyway. Of course, as with all BPL missions, there will also be a complete Mission Report available with statistics, photographs, conclusions, jargon, tabs, typos and tables. Additionally, BPL will be generating more touristic landscape paintings and depictions of local delivery systems such as those rendered in our first Outsourcing Mission. These will be available if you like the project but are not into the MSG (Mission Specific Gestalt).
MISSION STATUS:
BPL's outsourcing project has already begun. The entire labor force (Steven Brower) is now in China (as of 21 April, 2010) laying the groundwork for the mission. Management decided it would be interesting to attempt to launch and conduct this entire project from China, to add authenticity and needless complexity. Certain social networking sites commonly employed by Kickstarter project originators are blocked by the host government, and so updates to the project will appear here and at this blog: . If workarounds for the social networking problem can be instituted, we will also update the project from Steven Brower's F B location.
NOTES:
Please note that American Chinese Food differs considerably from the Chinese version. As with all Sino-American interpretation schemes, contents may not match advertised images. So if you'd like to order some real Chinese food, and you don't mind waiting for a good thing, and you don't mind not actually eating the food yourself, consider backing this project. Please look at the website mentioned above for images of the paintings made during the previous mission. Also watch for frequent entertaining updates! Any money gathered in excess of expenditures directed at the students will be folded into BPL's Search For Life On Earth (SFLOE) missions. BPL is not a charity organization, but in this instance, it doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to figure out that helping people can be a positive component of cultural exchange. Basically, I buy a meal for some students and you buy a painting from me- everybody gets some nourishment and gets a little more connected. See for information about other Missions and impoverished Aerospacey activity.
Project location: 晋城市, 山西省
