Elephant astronauts on Mars won't happen, despite this ridiculous tweet

The Times of London is wasting absolutely no time with this year's 420 holiday, blasting out a tweet about elephants being astronauts that's got the internet pretty confused.

Here's the missive in all its glory:

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Whoa. That's ... out there, man.

Twitter was quick with the responses.

The actual story the tweet links to makes a bit more sense. It's about a scientist at Cornell University who is studying elephants' "low risk of cancer" and how that could apply to protecting humans traveling in space from radiation. The story also gets into a weird ethical territory about possibly altering human genes to harness the elephants' apparent super-power.

But.

That tweet.

And this lede:

If elephants were astronauts, colonising Mars would be more feasible. They may be rather more expensive to propel to escape velocity, but crucially they are also far less likely to get cancer on the six-month journey to the Red Planet.

I mean, sure. Yeah. That's a statement that is kinda sorta true, especially if you're burning a spliff, listening to your beat-up Phish cassettes and just ... thinking.

But, factually speaking, elephants would make terrible astronauts for several reasons.

1. They're too big for the space station.

2. Their space suits would be too hard to put on.

3. It'd be hard to make an astronaut helmet to fit their trunks.

4. No opposable thumbs.

5. Elephants don't possess the necessary knowledge of mechanics and physics to successfully fly a rocket or space shuttle. Probably.

I could go on but I'm really too entertained by imagining an astronaut elephant now.

Would the astronaut elephant's trunk have its own helmet? Would the entire helmet encompass the elephant's head and trunk? Could you just give the elephant a scuba-like snorkel for the trunk?

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Happy 420, everybody!