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When Cows Fly: The Artist's Vision
By Daniel Sorid
Staff Writer
posted: 02:03 pm ET
11 May 2000
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cow_launch_000511 You can almost hear Mission Control: "All systems go. And lift off of Space Shuttle Atlantis carrying the first ever bovine astronaut, on a mission to break new ground for the animal kingdom." While cows may not be serving as astronauts -- yet -- one has been sighted on the streets of Chicago as part of a public art exhibit called CowParade, which has displayed hundreds of fiberglass cows in Zurich, Switzerland and Chicago over the past two years. 
"Milky Way Cow" (Artists: members of Yollocalli Youth Art Museum; not sold) Unfortunately for NASA, the bovine astronaut has been auctioned off by CowParade after a long run in Chicago. But this summer, the cows are coming to New York. A spokesman for the exhibit could not yet say whether any would be "go for launch." In addition to a whole herd of non-spacey cows -- like Orcow the whale cow -- the Chicago exhibit also paraded Milky Way Cow, Sky Cow and a Hey-Diddle-Diddle Cow. Sky cow was auctioned off to Oprah Winfrey for $38,000. 
"Moooonwalk Cow" (Artists: Craig Wartman, Robert Finzel; $13,000 auction price) 
"I can deny that."
Despite the visual evidence, NASA insists that no cow has been inducted into the astronaut corps. "I can deny that," said Douglas D. Peterson, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center, where astronauts are interviewed, selected and trained. "It looks like a cow in a raincoat," he said about the fiberglass astronaut, whose official name is Moooonwalk Cow. "They should have him in zero-G. It should be a spacewalk." Apparently, the cow's spacesuit does not even meet NASA protocol. The tubes that connect the body to the helmet are off, Peterson said -- "Probably for milking" -- and human astronauts don't have a yellow visor, "That must be because he's trying to eat grass." Perhaps the cows have their own space agency.
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