Name A Space Station Node Contest

Click on the link and vote. Now also note that there is a blank section where you can suggest your own name for the node not on the list.

I suggest we vote Traveller as the write-in candidate name.

WES Wing....Will Explode Soon.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090310/ap_on_re_us/nasa_colbert;_ylt=AjGyL_hCRIrspB_DAInWcOsDW7oF

QuoteWASHINGTON – Earth to Space Station Colbert: The cosmic joke may be on NASA. Comedian Stephen Colbert, who couldn't get his mock presidential campaign off the ground, is polling better by aiming higher. He's convinced his many fans to write in his name in NASA's online public vote to name a new room to be added to the international space station.

So instead of NASA's suggested choices — Serenity, Legacy, Earthrise or Venture — the space station's new addition may wind up with the name "Colbert."

The count by mid-Tuesday had votes for the comedian just shy of 115,000 and Serenity trailing at 98,641. More than 451,000 people have voted.

The to-be-named space station room, currently called Node 3, is scheduled to be delivered to the space station near the end of this year. It will have lots of big windows and a machine that will turn astronauts' urine into drinking water.

The name Colbert doesn't quite fit with NASA's theme, said agency spokesman John Yembrick. Other U.S. rooms in the international orbiting outpost are named Unity, Harmony and Destiny. However, the space agency hasn't made any decision and voting continues until March 20.

NASA has a legalistic out. Its contest rules say voting results "are not binding on NASA and NASA reserves the right to ultimately select a name" in keeping with its best interests.

Colbert's guest on "The Colbert Report" Tuesday was the strait-laced NASA official in charge of space station operations, William Gerstenmaier. After taping the show, Gerstenmaier wouldn't reveal what he told the comedian but said he had fun "in an engineer way."

Gerstenmaier said the idea behind the contest was to get people excited about space and he held out hope that NASA won't be stuck or have to ignore the vote: "We've got till the 20th of the month.... I'm looking for folks to be creative and think about what they're doing."

And don't cry for Colbert if NASA uses its regulations to thwart him. He's already managed to get his name attached to an ice cream flavor, a Hungarian bridge and an eagle, to name a few.

This man has been my hero since Strangers With Candy....

Ha!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090323/ap_on_re_us/sci_space_station_colbert;_ylt=AiG4UjItvtkwLUMIgWRhUQoDW7oF

QuoteWASHINGTON – NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won.

The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year.

NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report" to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.

NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April, but will give top vote-getters "the most consideration."

Doubt it'll really be the name, but too funny.

btw, I did write in Traveller, just in case you started a movement.  Then I could have said I was in on the ground floor.

If Colbert won, then the module should be named after him.

Its just so damn Pop Culture, though...

Bah:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090415/sc_space/nasanamesspacemoduleaftermoonbasenotstephencolbert

QuoteThis story was updated April 15 at 12:27 a.m. EDT.


Displaying both a sense of history and humor, NASA on Tuesday revealed "Tranquility" as the name of its newest space station module, while christening a new astronaut exercise device after comedian Stephen Colbert, whose name led their public opinion poll for what to name the orbiting outpost's new room.


Appearing on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report", the late night satirical news show hosted by Colbert, astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams broke the news that the space agency would not be naming the new Node 3 module after the comedian. Instead, the space agency gave him the consolatory honor as the namesake for the International Space Station's (ISS) upgraded treadmill.


"We've decided that the Node 3 will be called 'Tranquility,'" Williams told a shocked-looking Colbert as the audience booed in protest.


"Wait a second!" Colbert exclaimed. "I was assured that my name would be in space. Are you saying that NASA's going back on that?"


Williams assured Colbert his name would fly in space attached to the Tranquility node's new treadmill, the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT. Click here to see the COLBERT patch that will carry Colbert's likeness to the space station.


"I think a treadmill is better than a node, you know why? Because the node is just a box for the treadmill," Colbert said. "Nobody says 'Hey, my mom bought me a Nike box.' They want the shoes that are inside."


Node 3 name game


Node 3, the space agency proved that its poll was not a popularity contest while still choosing one of the many names suggested by visitors to its website. Although it is impossible to know why so many chose "Tranquility", the name is related to one of the most notable events in NASA's 50 year history.


Tranquility Base was the touchdown site for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing, 40 years ago this July. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon, exploring part of the geographical area known as Mare Tranquillitatis, or the Sea of Tranquility.


The Tranquility node will join similar modules "Unity" and "Harmony", which are already part of the ISS, when it is launched in February 2010 by space shuttle Endeavour. Tranquility will be used to house the outpost's life support systems, including facilities for producing the oxygen that the crew breathes and recycling their urine into drinkable water.


Its star attraction however, is the Cupola. Literally a room with a view, this six-windowed dome will offer the station's six-person crew a place to control robotic arm operations, as well as afford them unparalleled vistas of the Earth rotating below, if not perhaps the moon above.


With the Node named Tranquility, NASA needed a way to let Colbert down easy after he encouraged his fans - members of the "Colbert Nation" - to suggest his name instead. True to form, NASA adapted the comedian's surname to be used for the space station's second treadmill, launching in August.  Previously referred to simply as Treadmill-2, it has now been redubbed COLBERT.


Williams said that every day when astronauts exercise on the new treadmill, they'll see his face on the patch and have to tell Mission Control "it's time to jump on COLBERT."


NASA received more than 230,000 write-in votes to name the node "Colbert", surpassing the next runner-up, Serenity by 40,000 ballots. The results grabbed headlines and gave rise to the rumor that NASA might name the module's toilet for the TV host.


William Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations chief, said the space agency has invited Colbert to its Florida spaceport to watch the COLBERT treadmill launch into space in August. Colbert has also been invited to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to try out a version of the treadmill which astronauts use for training.


"And however far the space station goes, my treadmill will always have gone a few miles more," Colbert said.

Its bullshit. Not that they didn't use Colbert, which frankly they should have, if it was a vote in the first place, but they didn't even use the #2 result Serenity, which was one of their own options and not a write in.  This just proves they had NO intention of ever paying any attention to the result of the vote.

Which makes them a bunch of assholes. But why should this be a surprise? They've been pretending to listen to the public for years now, just as much as they are pretending to have a space program.

NASA needs to be fucking mothballed at this point. I was upset when I heard during the elections that Obama wasn't particularly favourable toward NASA, but frankly, what the fuck does it matter? Its not like they actually do any space exploration anyways! They're not fucking going to mars; shit, we should be in goddamned Jupiter by now!

But instead, we're in a little box floating in the outer atmosphere being maintained by a fleet of utterly obsolete 30 year old non-reusable-rocket shuttles and ironically slightly-less-obsolete 40 year old capsules, and pretending that this is erstwhile space exploration.

Fuck them all. NASA has utterly failed, and utterly lost their way under the weight of their own bureaucracy and arrogance.
This will be remembered as the Great Lost Age of space exploration.  Where after the initial great discoveries and accomplishments, we decided to spend 50+? years dicking around and utterly lose all momentum.

The only question that remains is whether this civilization will actually get off its ass and renew the serious space exploration, or if that will be for some future people, who will one day look back at the remains of the Apollo mission on the moon with the same quaintness that we look at the Viking ruins in Newfoundland, as the guys who managed to get all the way there, only to fail.

RPGPundit

Its bullshit. Not that they didn't use Colbert, which frankly they should have, if it was a vote in the first place, but they didn't even use the #2 result Serenity, which was one of their own options and not a write in.  This just proves they had NO intention of ever paying any attention to the result of the vote.

Which makes them a bunch of assholes.

NASA needs to be fucking mothballed at this point. I was upset when I heard during the elections that Obama wasn't particularly favourable toward NASA, but frankly, what the fuck does it matter? Its not like they actually do any space exploration anyways! They're not fucking going to mars; shit, we should be in goddamned Jupiter by now!

But instead, we're in a little box floating in the outer atmosphere being maintained by a fleet of utterly obsolete 30 year old non-reusable-rocket shuttles and ironically slightly-less-obsolete 40 year old capsules, and pretending that this is erstwhile space exploration.

Fuck them all. NASA has utterly failed, and utterly lost their way under the weight of their own bureaucracy and arrogance.
This will be remembered as the Great Lost Age of space exploration.  Where after the initial great discoveries and accomplishments, we decided to spend 50+? years dicking around and utterly lose all momentum.

The only question that remains is whether this civilization will actually get off its ass and renew the serious space exploration, or if that will be for some future people, who will one day look back at the remains of the Apollo mission on the moon with the same quaintness that we look at the Viking ruins in Newfoundland, as the guys who managed to get all the way there, only to fail.

RPGPundit

I agree, Pundit. I was born 6 months before man first set foot on the moon. I was promised moon-bases and men on Mars, god dammit. I want to know who I sue to get my future back! :mad:

Ever since hearing about the Orion project from the 1960s, I wish politics hadn't scotched more research into the methodology.  I mean, there was plenty that had to be overcome to make it viable, but the potential Dyson and others claimed for it...Alpha Centauri in 6 months!