COLBERT is going to space!!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2009/04/14 11:00 CDT

Topics:

It's just been announced: Although the name "Colbert" won the popular vote for the new moniker for Node 3 at the International Space Station, NASA has elected not to name Node 3 for the Comedy Central fake news show host, but instead named it for Tranquility, the name for the Apollo 11 landing site.

HOWEVER. Astronaut Sunita Williams, who appeared on Colbert to make the announcement, had a pretty awesome consolation prize: she said that in August, NASA would be launching to the ISS the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. Yes, the acronym is COLBERT. This made my husband roll his eyes and say "that's weak." However, even he agreed it was pretty awesome when Williams went on to explain:

Williams: Everybody will know, every day, someone will have to jump on the COLBERT to work out, so those will be the words that will be passed down from the space station to the ground: "It's time for me to jump on COLBERT."
olbert: (looks amazed): Wow.
..
olbert: You know, I think the treadmill is better than the node. You know why? Because the node is just the box for the treadmill. Nobody says, "hey, my mom bought me a Nike box." They want the shoes that are inside.

This patch'll be posted on the side of the treadmill, which will reside within ~~Node 3~~ Tranquility.

NASA

Official NASA Patch for the COLBERT

The COLBERT is the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, set to launch to space in August 2009.

I'll embed the video clip from the Colbert Report when I locate it -- looks like they're available on the show's site a week after airing.

Postscript: Awesome. I beat NASA to the punch posting the announcement on Twitter. Pregnancy may have slowed me way down but I've still got fast fingers! --of course I wasn't faster than all the people who copied the news from collectSPACE, which apparently broke it a couple hours early.