This week we're focussing on the long overlooked and tireless efforts of the inanimate carbon rod in the field of space travel.

Perhaps the most details we've ever gleaned about how space flight works is from the episode where Homer goes into space in The Simpsons and yet despite our detailed essay about that episode, NASA says we still need more training. Unbelievable.

Anyway, our Small Steps, Giant Leaps series has covered some of the greatest events of space travel known to man, but surely this was the greatest event in recent memory.

In a campaign to boost the ratings for space launches, NASA goes looking for an average Joe to send into space (after dismissing the idea of telling everyone that the chimps they sent into space came back “super intelligent”), but come up with Homer Simpson instead.

When they eventually track him down they decide to take Barney Gumble along to training camp too and put the lads through their paces, which you can expect to encounter if you enter the Lynx Apollo competition to head into space yourself, just like Homer.

But don't worry, they won't send you to that terrible Planet of the Apes. Wait a minute... Statue of Liberty...that was our planet! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!

After winning by default - the two sweetest words in the English language - Homer gets the chance to join Buzz Aldrin and Race Banyon to head on a mission to see if ants could be trained to sort tiny screws in space, which ultimately fails when Homer accidentally breaks the case on the ant farm, releasing them from their ant farm into “horrible, horrible freedom”.

This leads Kent Brockman to believe that the giant ants he sees close up on camera to be a breed of super alien, who are now in charge of the space ship, and he pledges his allegiance to the new overlords, reminding them that he could be helpful “in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves”.

When James Taylor, with his own brand of laid-back adult contemporary music, suggests that they create a total vacuum to get rid of the ants who are clogging up the instruments, the handle on the door breaks leaving Homer floating in space, before the door is jury-rigged shut with the hero of our story averting disaster, the inanimate carbon rod.

Without the rod, we truthfully wouldn't know anything about space travel, and if you get involved in the competition with Lynx Apollo, you might even get to see the inanimate carbon rod...wow.

If you too want to go into space, then it is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season and that you head over to lynxpollo.com to sign up. And remember, a shiny new donkey for whoever brings us the head of Colonel Montoya.