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NASA Names Space Station Treadmill After Colbert
willith writes "The SF Chronicle reports on the results of the International Space Station Node 3 naming contest (which we previously discussed). Comedian and fake-pundit Stephen Colbert conducted a bombastic write-in campaign and repeatedly urged his show's fan base (the 'Colbert Nation') to stuff the ballot box with his name, which resulted in 'Colbert' coming in first in the write-in contest with almost a quarter-million votes. Although the Node 3 component will not be named 'Colbert' — NASA has instead chosen to call it 'Tranquility' — one of the Node 3 components will bear the honor: the second ISS treadmill, which will be installed in Node 3, will be named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. The formal announcement was made on the air yesterday at 22:30 EDT on the Colbert Report by astronaut Sunita Williams."
Less than five minutes? Seriously, it's a better use for my tax dollars than at least 60% of government spending.
It's not hard to come up with acronyms.
--ANONYMOUS nagging oxymorognic neogeodesic yuppie-man on universal soapbox COWARD of wayward and radical dichotomies.
This is probably the best thing they could have done. By naming the treadmill after him, they didn't have to name the whole module after him and they still get good publicity from Colbert's show.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
So, fellow browncoats, we were on the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one though ;)
To be fair, they DID say from the beginning that they reserved the right to pick a name themselves regardless of the poll's outcome.
I suspect that Colbert himself played a big role in this decision. He isn't going to drop out of character to say so, but Colbert-the-pundit is a character, and I imagine Colbert-the-person wasn't entirely comfortable saddling an "important" component of the space program (all ISS contempt aside) with the name of a comedy character. Their final decision still gave his character plenty of mileage -- "the treadmill is the really important part, the 'module' is just a box that the treadmill comes in" -- while preserving a bit of what many would perceive as decorum.
Maybe they figured out that everyone immediately jumped to Firefly when they heard Serenity, and they didn't want that association. On the other hand, I question the wisdom of giving it a name that already is hugely significant in the annals of space travel, since it was also the name of the Apollo 11 moon landing site, but what are you gonna do. Every name has some issue with it.
I would have liked them to name the commode after Colbert instead, but this is a pretty clever compromise on its own, and its in keeping with the government's practice of creating cumbersome acronyms for ordinary objects, so I guess it works.
All of ten minutes and it's basically free, massive publicity with almost no effort.
Do you think you would've known about this new ISS module if it weren't for Colbert?
major slap in the face from NASA
I guess - if an online naming poll is really that big a deal - that this qualifies as a major slap in the face. My personal reaction runs more along the lines of "who the hell cares?"
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
WTF is Myyearbook?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
cool fact about democracy: If you don't agree with something, vote against it.
What you are suggesting is throwing away legitimate votes - cast by real people and not bots - because *you* have some arbitrary rules about which votes should count and which should not. And that is not democratic.
1) According to the site, 1190437 people submitted votes or named selections. "Colbert" got 230539 and "Serenity" got about 190k. Even combined, the top two choices only got about 35 percent of the vote. Alone, "Colbert" got about 19% of the vote. Even if the poll results were not biased by ballot stuffing, all they make clear is that no matter what choice NASA made, 80 percent of the voters disagreed with it. In no reasonable sense did "Colbert" win an election -- if a candidate was voted into office with a plurality of only 19% of the vote, there would be calls for his head and the system would probably be reformed.
2)Can we please stop conflating whoever put this survey on with the entirety of NASA? Some small group of people within the organization are responsible for the survey and the name selection. Complain about Bill Gerstenmaier, as it appears that he bears some responsibility for the survey and the naming, or maybe the ISS Project Office.
3)The rules did make it clear that the contest "winner" wouldn't necessarily be picked for the module name. It even gives reasons why: "NASA reserves the right to ultimately select a name in accordance with the best interests of the agency, its needs, and other considerations. Such name may not necessarily be one which is on the list of voted-on candidate names." The ISS is a big international project, and it's possible that the naming of a module might have a diplomatic effect. Relations with the Russians, our major partners on the station, seem somewhat stressed, maybe even on station. So not selecting what may be viewed as the flippant choice for a module name seems the more diplomatically sound choice.
--sabre86
Yeah really stupid. Now they'll only get publicity when Colbert visits NASA, the first time its launched, the first time he interviews someone on it, etc. And they do it without pissing off international partners (it may be our node, but it ain't our space station).
Cool fact about democracy: if you're in the minority your vote doesn't count.
Oh it counts in some wishy-washy you've-made-your-voice-heard kind of way, but as for actually counting, no. Winner takes all.