Sunita "Suni" Williams NASA's Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office, an amazing woman who has accomplished so much was chosen as the spokesperson for NASA to appear on "The Colbert Report" Tuesday April 14. She made the announcement just a short time ago what the results of the contest to name the space node by voting for several names or writing in a suggestion were.
Stephen had urged his "Colbert Nation" to write in "Colbert" and they did en mass. It has been decided by NASA the space node won't be named Cobert after all.
It will be named Tranquility even though Colbert clearly won the contest with the most votes (230,000.) Tranquility was the eighth most popular name.
But wait...
NASA is naming the treadmill used for exercise inside the space station after Colbert which Stephen seemed very happy with. It'll be called the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).
Another NASA spokesman Mike Curie said that the COLBERT treadmill is a new version that will be operational in August.
"We don't typically name U.S. space station hardware after living people and this is no exception," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, said, adding: "We have invited Stephen to Florida for the launch of COLBERT and to Houston to try out a version of the treadmill that astronauts train on."
Not too shabby Stephen Colbert. I do understand why perhaps it would have set an odd precedent to name a node after you but please let the members of the Colbert Nation know this is a great step for Colbertkind! Pretty cool compromise I'd say. Congrats!
One last thought for this early morning hour: Sunita is a strong role model for girls, there aren't enough of them and she's definitely good one!
G'night,
Laura
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