OK, I'll go easy on the impotence jokes here. I promise—just straight-up hard reporting on this one. Damn…

Anyway, I'm happy to announce that Rocket Boy, an old-school ad featuring an impotence-fighting boy astronaut, is back and ready to go where no PETA ad has gone before: outer space. You see, Virgin chair Sir Richard Branson just unveiled the WhiteKnightTwo, a carrier aircraft created to launch a commercial six-passenger spaceship within the next decade. PETA wants Rocket Boy to be onboard, so our VP Bruce Friedrich sent Branson a letter asking to buy ad space on the seat backs.

In his letter, Bruce writes:

By following our advice and ditching meat, your male passengers could rise to new heights. Cholesterol and saturated fat clog arteries and block blood flow to all of a man's vital organs—not just to his heart. Physicians report that the link is clear: Eating meat can cause impotence. Any of your passengers who have trouble "lifting off" will be glad to hear that impotence—as well as heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and prostate cancer—can likely be prevented and even reversed by switching to a healthy vegetarian diet.

No word back from Mr. Branson yet, but here's Rocket Boy, all suited up and ready to launch:

In some ways, there's just so much to say about Rocket Boy, and yet now that I'm sitting down to write about it, it kind of leaves me a little speechless. Rocket Boy was an ad that we created about 10 years ago (when I was but a Rocket Boy myself) to highlight the connection between eating meat and impotence, and it recently resurfaced in all its glory when some genius in our Campaigns Department dug it up and circulated it around the office today. The Rocket Boy ad comes from the same brilliant minds that brought you "The Three Stages of a Weiner," and "I Threw a Party but the Meat-Eaters Couldn't Come."

Please direct all complaints to WTFRocketBoy@peta.org, with the subject line "Please, please, please stop with the impotence jokes already. Think of the children!" And without further ado ... Rocket Boy, ladies and gentlemen: