Earlier this year NASA held a contest to name a module being added to the International Space Station and included space for a write in vote. Someone on the Colbert Report staff heard of this and Stephen Colbert mobilized the “Colbert Nation” to vote to call the module Colbert.
Scientology (Xenu), Dave Barry (Buddy) and a few environmentalist groups (Amazonis) got onto the vote bandwagon. But not surprisingly Steven Colbert won the popular vote by quite a landslide (over 230,000 votes out of 1.2 million cast).
NASA made it very clear that they reserved the right to call the module what ever they wish and eventually announced on the Colbert Show that the module would be called Tranquility. Obviously they are not immune to public opinion and offered to call the treadmill installed in the module COLBERT, for “Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill”. Stephen of course said yes.
COLBERT is due to be launched this week (after a couple of delays) on STS-128 and will be fully installed next spring when the Tranquility module arrives in orbit.
NASA showed it has a sense of humour, got some attention and maybe attracted a little more support from viewers. In the future I think the space program is going to need all the help and support it can muster, getting good at playing the PR game can only help. The enginerds and space guys are onboard, it’s convincing the public who don’t see a return, beyond some pretty pictures from Hubble, from the billions spent on space that it’s money well spent.
