World View to Send KFC Chicken Sandwich to Stratosphere
KFC Zinger Stratollite (Credit: KFC)
TUCSON, Ariz. (World View PR) – World View, the stratospheric exploration company, today announced it will launch the first extended duration development flight of its high-altitude Stratollite™ vehicle later this month, carrying a commercial payload from flight partner KFC. With the launch window opening on June 21, this will be World View’s first ever live broadcast launch, and its most important to date for the Stratollite vehicle. This pivotal milestone signals the market readiness of the first-ever, long-duration, navigable stratospheric payload vehicle, opening an entirely new economy and application markets in the stratosphere.
“The Stratollite is spearheading a new market for data collection of our planet, the environment and human activity from a perch at the very edge of space,” said Jane Poynter, World View founder and CEO. “This next mission will be our first attempt to really push the envelope with a flight designed to test, for the very first time, all the integrated critical systems needed to bring this Stratollite online for commercial markets.”
In need of a spaceflight partner to literally launch KFC’s new flagship spicy Zinger chicken sandwich to space in an entirely new and different way, KFC and creative agency Wieden+Kennedy approached World View about participating in a historic flight to the edge of space. Intrigued by the idea, World View saw this as a great opportunity to publicly demonstrate the Stratollite’s capabilities to a mass public audience, while simultaneously financing a portion of the vehicle’s development program. Thus, the World View and KFC partnership was born, aiming to usher in a new era of stratospheric discovery and chicken sandwich space exploration.
The remotely controlled, un-crewed Stratollite vehicle features a Stratocraft™ payload module carried by a system of high-altitude balloons that ascends to and operates along the edge of space, offering low-cost, long-duration persistence over customer-specified areas of interest. World View’s proprietary altitude-control technology allows it to harness stratospheric winds to steer the Stratollite to and from desired locations, and loiter above them for weeks and months of time.
Stratollites can carry a wide variety of commercial payloads (sensors, telescopes, communications arrays, etc.), launch rapidly on demand and safely return payloads back to Earth after mission completion. Among its wide variety of uses, the Stratollite will help researchers greatly advance knowledge of planet Earth, improve our ability to identify and track severe weather, and assist first responders during natural disasters.
Until now, World View’s previous test flights for Stratollite have spanned between six and 12 hours in length. The partnership with KFC expands the flight profile to four days, allowing World View to better define the flight envelope and demonstrate the vehicle’s breakthrough, long-duration capability. KFC’s Zinger spicy chicken sandwich will serve as the primary payload for this flight.
“The Stratollite was created to deliver more routine and meaningful access to space for all, and this mission allows us to give edge-of-space access to a commercial customer that would previously deem a project like this unimaginable,” said Taber MacCallum, World View co-founder and chief technology officer. “Sure, this whole chicken sandwich payload is a bit funny. But, KFC gets to embark upon a one-of-a-kind marketing experiment, while we get to pursue our first multi-day shakedown cruise in the stratosphere. It’s a win for all. We’re pleased to have the opportunity to creatively bridge the divide between our industry and global brands that carry a more mainstream audience.”
The partnership with KFC also allows this historic mission to be livestreamed via KFC social channels and www.KFCin.space.
“This is an R&D shakedown mission, and as with all things R&D, there’s a very real chance some of the new Stratollite systems won’t operate nominally,” said Taber MacCallum. “In any case, World View is excited to take the public along for this ride. So through KFC’s live downlink, we invite you to join the cruise.”
“We’re excited to be the ones pushing spicy, crispy chicken sandwich space travel forward,” said Kevin Hochman, KFC U.S. president. “But in all seriousness, we’re proud to support World View’s commitment to advancing space research and trust them to take our world famous Zinger sandwich to space.”
World View has two additional flights planned for this summer, with several others booked with science and research customer payloads planned before the end of the year.
About World View® Enterprises, Inc.
World View’s innovative flight technologies offer a unique perspective of Earth from the edge of space. World View delivers meaningful insights to enterprises, agencies, and individuals via two primary business segments: Stratollite un-crewed flight systems and Voyager human spaceflight systems. Stratollites, in operation today, offer low-cost, long-duration, persistent high-altitude flight for enterprise and government agencies. Using advanced stratospheric balloon technology, Stratollite applications include communications, remote sensing, weather, and research. The Voyager human spaceflight experience is under development and will launch in the near future, offering private citizens a comfortable, safe, and perspective-changing voyage to the edge of space via high-altitude balloon. To learn more about World View, visit www.WorldView.space.
About KFC
KFC Corporation, based in Louisville, Ky., is the world’s most popular chicken restaurant chain. KFC specializes in Original Recipe®, Extra Crispy™, Kentucky Grilled Chicken® and Extra Crispy™ Tenders, Hot Wings™, Go Cups, KFC Famous Bowls®, Pot Pies, freshly hand prepared chicken sandwiches, biscuits and homestyle side items. There are over 20,500 KFC outlets in more than 125 countries and territories around the world. KFC Corporation is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., Louisville, Ky. (NYSE: YUM). For more information, visit www.kfc.com. Follow KFC on Facebook (www.facebook.com/kfc), Twitter (www.twitter.com/kfc) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/KFC).
28 responses to “World View to Send KFC Chicken Sandwich to Stratosphere”
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KFC doesn’t even grow in Sweden. Good luck in space.
Wikipedia says there are actually three KFC franchises in Sweden and there are expected to be five by late summer. One, that just opened, is in Goteborg and one is near Malmo with a second one in Malmo currently under construction. The other two – one of which is still under construction – are in smaller cities east of Stockholm. Stockholm, itself, has no KFC franchises as yet.
KFC apparently did not “grow in Sweden” the first time it was “planted” in the early 1980’s. This more recent “re-seeding” seems to be working out a bit better.
Global multinationational corporations will not be stopped by mere consumer rejection.
No, they won’t. The successful ones will do research to understand why they failed and try again. Colonel Sanders failed a number of times before he got his recipe, and business model, to work.
Or they will hire marketing companies and image specalists and throw money at them until the consumer is beat into submission.
Yes, that is the conventional wisdom among leftists and Mencken-wannabe cynics going back at least as far as Vance Packard. There’s an old and probably not apocryphal tale of a dog food company which tried just that in the wake of an initial product failure. After all the fancy consultants had done their best, the last one out the door is alleged to have said, “Dogs just don’t like the food.” People are not dumber than dogs.
Yes they are, who flogs there guts out at work all day and who lazes at home eating, sleeping and playing ball?
Ah, they are finally coming? I think they made a failed attempt many years ago. Chicken sales grows very fast with the muslim mass immigration.
Yes, KFC had an unsuccessful initial foray into Sweden in the early 1980’s. Perhaps the company failed to give this initiative enough attention at that time. Given how rapidly the company’s franchises were then multiplying in the People’s Republic of China it’s easy to see how distraction might have played a role in the initial failure to thrive in Sweden.
I was not aware immigrant Muslims were big consumers of chicken. My impression has been that the Islamic diet tends to run more in the direction of goat, mutton and lamb. Given that the U.S. has no established fast food chains based on such meats, perhaps it will fall to some enterprising fellow among the new wave of invaders – oops, I mean immigrants – to stand up a McMutton’s or Kebob King chain.
They had a telecon this morning. I told them World View to Send KFC Chicken Sandwich into the Stratosphere was the last headline I would have ever imagined writing.
At least you got the headline right. Other places are saying they’re putting the sandwich into space. Ugh.
That’s on the commercial itself.
Wonder if Gary Hudson was involved in this too…
Which is exactly what gives it a great PR value! Welcome to the real world of free market space.
They fibbed. Not even to the Kármán line. So–no–they aren’t sending a sandwich to space.
NASA is working on crumb free bread–which would actually be useful. Again, new space gets the hype–and oldspace does the work. 😉
Small cultural question:
Is there a reason they can’t say chicken burger? Is “burger” trademarked in the US to another chain (Burger King, for eg.) or is it some sales tax thing in some states where “sandwiches” are taxed at a different rate than “burgers”?
I don’t see how as ‘burger’ means a towns-person.
Yes. And “Hamburger” means, literally, “a person from Hamburg.” And hot dogs are also called “frankfurters” or “weiners,” which literally mean, respectively, “a person from Frankfurt” and “a person from Vienna.”
JamesG is right. The English language is not logical. Given that English also has several times the vocabulary of any other natural language, the number of illogicalities it contains is also large.
The one thing English does not have – praise Cthulhu – is gendered articles and nouns. The fact that most European languages do have them automatically makes these European languages many times as nutty as English.
A word in defence of languages that still use strict cases, and decline verbs. Radio. Ever participate in a radio telephone network? Things like infantry nets, or air traffic control networks are very difficult to get used to. It’s like watching a Shakespeare play/movie and it takes five to ten min to rewire the audio and comprehension centres of your brain to the almost new language coming your way. Watch Kenneth Braghnau’s “Henry The Vth” or listen to ATC live dot com. A declined language esp one with cases allows one to more easily back out what the person on the other end said because you have the extra hints of case and declination to combine with context to understand what was said over a poor connection. Or in the case of ATC a deliberate desire to confuse pilots :). A good case is Russian which declines verbs, and nouns to communicate, tense, plurality, ownership, direction/nature of motion, location, and of course (largely useless) gender. When trying to understand rapid fire Russian I’m constantly missing 70+% of what’s being said, but by keying on the endings tacked onto verbs and nouns, I can back out a good portion of what’s being said. Even with my poor vocabulary of the Russian language, the basic grammar acts as a skeleton for me to make up for a lot of what I don’t know. My bet is languages like Russian fare better at transmitting communications over things like radio networks than order specific languages like English.
Why do we call a sandwich made of ground up cow a “HAM burger”? (yes I know Wiki knows). The English language isn’t logical.
Mostly its marketing, Americans associate “burger” with ground beef sandwiches. Anything else is “wierd”, and is associated with fads or experimental foods that usually flop in the market place.
The answer is no. One can trademark a phrase that contains the word “burger,” but not the word itself.
The reason it’s called a “sandwich” instead of a “burger” is that, at least in the US, a “burger” is assumed to be made from a ground meat (or vegetable) patty. So you have turkey burgers, boca (vegetable) burgers, hamburgers (which are actually beef), pork burgers, even ostrich and emu burgers. It has nothing to do with trademarks. These sandwiches are not made from ground chicken, so they are not chicken burgers.
Hummm, maybe for a gag ad in a remake of “Kentucky Fried Movie”?
I guess you take your revenues where you can get them…
They sure do have the power PR statement down. You’d almost think they were doing something different than what high school kids have been doing for years…
Exactly. In free market space the only gatekeeper is money. You have the money you are able to fly want you want.
That’s not actually what I meant.
Where no sandwich has gone before…
If, as an old saying puts it, one can indict a ham sandwich, I certainly see no barrier to putting a chicken sandwich in the upper atmosphere.
Perhaps SpaceX will top this by launching a giant meatball sub to orbit on the first test flight of Falcon Heavy. It’s not too late for competing fast food chains to get their bids in.
I hope this is very successful so other chains take notice and do their own flights. That is how free markets are actually born and build up.