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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."
Maybe we could get the toilets named RIAA or something?
I thought serenity was the runner up?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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.
Otherwise they're just making themselves liars.
How are they making themselves liars when the page had a big huge disclaimer on it that said they weren't bound by the results?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Probably not very long, really. The art of the TLA, and the related art of the backronym, are practiced in highly refined form by government agencies and the aerospace industry. NASA, being formed from the union of those sets, brings those arts very near to perfection. It's almost instinctual for them.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
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?
On the contest page, NASA has an explanation of why they chose the name 'Tranquility', as well as a little write-up of the COLBERT thing.
This guy's the limit!
> It's not rocket science
Is too!
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
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
"Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill"
The "Treadmill" is silent.
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.
That's what I say!
It's tacky if people in space have to say, "I'm going to the toilet", into a radio that might be heard by anyone on Earth. Instead, they would be able to say, "I'm going to file a Colbert Report."
Isn't that better?