The American public voted overwhelmingly in favour of designating the latest International Space Station node after the highly esteemed Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert D.F.A., whose name beat one of NASA’s own suggestions of Serenity [even after which misguided Joss Whedon fans attempted to inflate] in an online poll. NASA however, announced on Tuesday’s The Colbert Report that they in fact would not be naming the new module after the respected conservative presenter. Instead they have designated the module Tranquillity.
Now, as far as I know, NASA depends heavily on public funding to operate. So, would it not make sense to actually listen to that public when naming the stuff they’re paying for? They used to do so; thousands of Trekkies wrote to NASA in 1976 and based on that campaign the first Space Shuttle Constitution was redesignated Enterprise after the Star Trek starship. This open-minded recognition of the Trekkies’ wishes to see a real space vessel named for their their favourite fictional spacecraft secured lots of goodwill and monetary donations for NASA.
However, after going to the all the trouble, time, and expense of creating a voting mechanism for members of the public to suggest new names and make their choice for the new module, NASA have unceremoniously rammed a rocket booster up the voting public’s ass with a big F**K YOU! and are probably laughing hysterically back at their headquarters. Just because they have named it Tranquillity doesn’t ensure that the public will feel that way about having their choices sucked out of the airlock.
If this is the way NASA treats its supporters then I am not surprised that they can’t afford a new re-usable spacecraft technology like the Space Shuttle which is being dropped in favour of the backward single-use technology of yesteryear. Sir Stephen will have to be content with the ISS astronaut’s treadmill being named Colbert instead or rather C.O.L.B.E.R.T. for "Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill"!
4 comments:
Ah yes the Orion....jeezus it's not a step backwards , it's a race backwards. Half the reason the Shuttle was popular with the public at the start because it was Buck Rogers Territory . With this piece of tin crap we can go back to the good old days when Missons went by numbers...sigh . it's going to be twenty years again before anyone with balls is going to suggest reuseable spacecraft again...unless China or Richard Branson can come up with a viable option.
As for Colbert , you ave to ask what Gimp decided that tranquility was the perfect name , especially when you realise that part of the Pods function is to recycle the crews waste ...a fact that Colbert knew about but ironically ignored by all those Firefly Fans ....still they like firefly so they think shite is a good thing!
Shuttle may have looked high tech on the outside but on the inside, her systems made her one Ugly Baby.
Part of the reason for ditching Shuttle was safety, primarily there is no escape pod for the astronauts if anything goes wrong. Orion's capsule will be able to act like an escape pod.
Let private industry such as Virgin Galactica and Scaled Composites implement reuseable spacecraft.
It's time to let NASA concentrate on taking us back to the Moon and onto the other planets rather than operating an earth orbit Shuttle Bus.
It would be unAmerican to do anything else.
In college I designed an "not based on any knowlege of actual space proulsion science or astrogation etc" upgrade for the shuttle that allowed the cockpit section to become an escape pod. Problem solved. I regret now not sending it to them.
We should have been on Mars by '72. The great sadness of my life is that I won't live long enough to view our sun from a planet orbiting another star. Not sure this would have happened if we'd kept on pace, but it's a certainty it won't now.
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