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So, if you haven’t heard already or don’t care, in which case you’re a complete mongloid because everyone and their mother (who’s a whore) have been reporting or blogging about it, American comedian/writer Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, is leading the voter write-in nominations of possible names for the new ISS module, tentatively referred to as “Node 3″. NASA started the contest one month ago, opening with their own selection of possible names for the module for which users could vote, as well as offering the possibility for voters to suggest their own ideal name. In answer to this challenge, Stephen Colbert, who had already jumped on the space bandwagon late last year by having his DNA digitized and sent into space to be stored on the ISS as part of game developer Richard Garriot’s ridiculous media-whoring stunt, Operation Immortality, encouraged his numerous viewers to nominate his own name as an option, the votes for which then proceeded to skyrocket, demolishing all competition. Watch the drama unfold for yourself:

While that’s all well and good and fairly entertaining, what’s disturbing is NASA’s whole position on the matter, a là Contest Rule #4:

NASA will take into consideration the results of the voting. However, the results are not binding on NASA and 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. NASA’s decision shall be deemed final.

In layman’s terms, they reserve the right to bitch out on democracy. Granted, I perceive the inherent need to protect the integrity of the space program… hold on… Sorry, I had to perform a self-Heimlich. I mean, we wouldn’t want a complicated piece of orbital hardware that cost tens of millions of dollars to be burdened with some offensive moniker like the Spongebob Squarepants Module or the Hana Montana Node (and yet terrifyingly “Xenu” made it on to the list of voter suggestions, anyway). What’s most irritating about this is a comment I read this evening by some amateur that NASA shouldn’t honour Colbert’s victory in the naming contest because it would in essence be “free advertising” and inadvertently lend support or credence to the commercial entity that is Comedy Central.

Well let’s review that statement by first examining NASA’s in-house suggestions for names: Serenity, Earthrise, Legacy, and Venture. If you don’t already know the significance of “Serenity”, well, then, you’re a complete tool. But that can be easily fixed either by rapping yourself about the cranium with a heavy, blunt object or simply Googling “Serenity”. Notice how the first several results are all related to a certain film, which is related to a certain show, all of which incorporate a vessel named “Serenity”, itself named after a fictional valley in the TV series Firefly where a pivotal battle took place. First, if you want to be technical — and tasteful — save the frickin’ named “Serenity” for an actual spacecraft worthy of the name, preferably one crewed by an irresistibly ragtag band of mercenary veterans and unlikely heroes, and not some space toilet that in a few years’ time is going to de-orbit and incinerate in another one NASA’s eye-catching displays of global littering. Don’t let it be another Enterprise — you know, the space shuttle Enterprise— which thanks to a write-in campaign by the idiot public not unlike this most recent debacle, named a near-worthless test craft that never actually saw spaceflight and was later cannibalized for spare parts for use in other shuttles after the beloved flagship of Starfleet. It’s refreshing to learn their are plenty of nerds at NASA who can appreciate great science fiction but, please, let these names hold on to their historic and fantastic roots in our collective imagination and not be squandered on trivial technologies that share absolutely no relation to their namesakes.

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Tags: COLBERT REPORT, CONTEST, EARTHRISE, ISS, MMORPG, NASA, NODE 3, RANT, SERENITY, SPACE, STAR TREK, STEPHEN COLBERT, TL;DNR

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 2:14 PM and is filed under Space, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.