Colbert Doesn’t Get His Node, But Doesn’t Go Away Empty-Handed

In case you missed it, the new node to the space station is not going to be named after Stephen Colbert, even though he won the write-in vote in the naming contest.

Astronaut Suni Williams went on the show last night to announce the node will be named Tranquillity, in honor of Apollo 11 and spell-checkers everywhere.

“We don’t typically name U.S. space station hardware after living people and this is no exception,” NASA official Bill Gerstenmaier said in a press release issued late last night.

But Colbert didn’t come away empty-handed.

A new treadmill in the space station will be officially dubbed the ‘Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,’ or — wait for it — COLBERT.

Which, all in all, isn’t a bad move on NASA’s part. Could have been worse.

This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.