Archive for NASA
NASA update: COLBERT now fully operational
Posted by: | CommentsHey kids! Just a quick update for you on the space treadmill saga. When last we checked in, astronaut Nicole Stott was scheduled to have the first run on the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. on Friday, and we were told there would be video. It doesn’t look like any video has surfaced yet, and I’m not sure if that means there won’t be any, or they just haven’t got around to it. But we do have confirmation that the test run took place, from Nicole Stott’s Twitter feed:
According to the ISS status report for Saturday, Oct. 10, the test was successful and the treadmill was cleared for use. NASA astronaut Mike Barratt and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka both used the COLBERT for their last exercise session on the ISS on Saturday before returning to Earth aboard their Soyuz spacecraft on Sunday.
I’m kind of disappointed that there’s no video, but I did come across this amusing picture of several of the space station crew goofing around on the treadmill with a pretend “test run.” For all the time they spend doing serious work up there, it’s good that they get a chance to have a little fun once in a while!
Photo credit: NASA
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NASA update: Astronauts start running on COLBERT today!
Posted by: | CommentsGreetings, Zoners! I’ve been monitoring the progress on the C.O.L.B.E.R.T.’s assembly and testing, and the astronauts on the space station are getting very close to putting the treadmill to good use. Yesterday’s ISS status report included the news that the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. was activated and tested for the first time, and this great article from SPACE.com (Astronauts Build Stephen Colbert’s Space Treadmill) explains exactly where they are in the process. (It also includes this amusing quote from astronaut Nicole Stott: “We’re actually really looking forward to getting to run all over COLBERT.” Hah!) Earlier this morning, NASA posted a very interesting update on Twitter about the C.O.L.B.E.R.T., so I thought I’d share it with you here.
Woo hoo! We should finally get a chance to see Stephen’s namesake space treadmill in action! We may not get to see it live on NASA TV, since there will probably be a lot of coverage of today’s “bombing” of the moon. But once the video becomes available I’ll post it here, along with any further updates. I won’t be able to watch at 5:30 today since I’ll be at work, so if any of you Zoners with access to NASA TV checks in and sees that they’re showing it live, please let us know in the comments!
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COLBERT update: How to assemble a space treadmill
Posted by: | CommentsHey gang! As Stephen told us this past Wednesday (and I blogged on Monday), the crew aboard the International Space Station began putting together the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. this week. Today DB pointed me toward this article in the St. Petersburg Times explaining exactly what it will take to get the treadmill up and running for the astronauts to work off all that Tang and astronaut ice cream. It’s a pretty complicated operation.
Challenge of putting together COLBERT treadmill reaches new heights in space
by Leonora LaPeter Anton, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, October 4, 2009Many of us have labored through 30 pages of instructions to put together a wardrobe from Ikea or a desk from Office Depot. Pieces are sometimes missing or broken. It’s time-consuming. Fights break out over which piece goes where and there’s the inevitable “I told you so.”
But what’s it like to put together a $5 million treadmill in space?
Last week, astronauts aboard the International Space Station unpacked the COLBERT, named after Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert, and began the 20-hour process of putting it together.
The COLBERT — Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill — comes with 52 pieces and 62 pages of instructions.
. . .
Astronaut Nicole Stott of Clearwater will lead the effort during the next few weeks to assemble the 2,200-plus pound treadmill. Before Stott left for space, she spent four hours going over the assembly procedures with lighter mock pieces.
As with Ikea instructions, there are pictures to help Stott and other astronauts combine the parts. But NASA engineers added hundreds of step-by-step instructions: Align pins (one per side) on back side of Upper Isolator Bracket with spring end of Right Upper Isolators (two).
. . .
If you think furniture assembly is tough, add in the variable of weightlessness and you’ve got a level of complexity that Ikea can only aspire to attain. But knowing the care and detail that NASA teams put into their preparations for any space activities, I feel pretty confident that the ISS crew will wind up with a fully functional treadmill, and no leftover parts.
And now, in checking the On-Orbit Status Reports over at NASA.gov, it looks like they’re finished with the actual assembly:
T2/COLBERT Treadmill: Yesterday, the crew completed all planned T2 installation steps in Node-2. The remainder of the work was originally scheduled after the docked period, but the crew elected to use their free time to complete the job today. Everything has been going smoothly. ACO (Activation & Checkout) is planned after the 18S departure.
If I’m translating this correctly, the COLBERT is fully assembled and will be activated once the current Soyuz mission to the ISS is complete and the Soyuz ship and its crew undock from the station to return to Earth. Undocking is scheduled to happen on October 10th, so sometime shortly after that, we will hopefully have the first reports on the COLBERT’s use. (Now do we get another OMG! SPACE! interview?!?)
For more updates, you can follow NASA on Twitter (@NASA), and now you can also follow astronaut Nicole Stott (@Astro_Nicole), currently the only member of the ISS crew who is tweeting from space.
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Episode 5125 (9/30/2009)
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EPISODE NUMBER: 5125 (September 30, 2009)
GUEST: Richard Dawkins
SEGMENTS: Threat Down, C.O.L.B.E.R.T. treadmill
VIDEOS: Wednesday, September 30, 2009
It seems like forever since we saw a Threat Down, and this one was worth the wait. The whole dog/pants/sanitizer/cart thing was a fantastically absurd story to feature. And it’s good to see that Stephen still considers bears a threat.
And yay for the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. treadmill! We mentioned the story a few days ago, but it was really neat to see footage of the treadmill being put together, and it was doubly neat to see the patch in space. Because I’m a total nerd like that.
The Richard Dawkins interview was quite interesting. It’s such an interesting study to see what appears to be Stephen screaming as “Stephen”, but the actual Stephen having to creep in and join the conversation as well. It’s fun trying to figure out which Stephen is asking the question. Dawkins threw out my very least favorite phrase in interviews ever, “Read the book”, which really started the interview on a sour note for me. I have to admit, though, I loved Stephen’s Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup analogy, mostly because Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups are proof that there is a God and he loves us. And I absolutely loved how Stephen dropped the “No, I wasn’t listening” line on Dawson – classic!
What did all of you enjoy most about tonight’s episode?
- It will be missed.
- Send Max Baucus your health care bill. All of them. Believe me folks, he’s good for it.
- They have declared World War 3-ply.
- It seems the best, fluffiest toilet paper is made from old wood. Which is why from now on, I’m only getting toilet paper made from Hugh Hefner. I have a Peabody award.
- Oh, so now I can’t wipe with a Hummer either. I’ve gotten used to all the different settings.
- Environmentalists, I swear, if you take away my plush toilet paper, I’m just going to use the next softest thing – spotted owls.
- Shh – Kang, you’re going to blow it for us parents! Children are small but relentless opponents who want to replace us.
- Metal Cart! Hand Sanitizer! Dog! Synthetic Pants!
- This is a threat to germaphobic pet owning polyester pants wearers everywhere.
- I’ve ran out of room for the metal cart, so I’ve included an asterisk and a footnote over here.
- That means we can’t shoot them, just as we got the right to take guns into national parks. It’s like the gift of the magi if the husband had been a grizzly bear and he had sold his pocket watch to buy his wife a gun.
- Turns out, NASA didn’t have the moon rocks to follow through. Instead of naming the node after me, NASA slapped my name on a treadmill and launched it into space. Well I have just one thing to say. NASA slapped my name on a treadmill and launched it into space! Suck it, space node!
- Put down the Tang, tubbo!
- I didn’t listen to you last time, you see, you don’t know how this works.
- Dawkins: Where’s the evidence for God? Stephen: Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups.
- God, are you deaf? It came from God!
- Floored me? No, I wasn’t listening.
- If that’s true, and we’ve had a million years of doing this, why are there still so many ugly people?
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NASA update: COLBERT assembly begins today
Posted by: | CommentsI really am turning into a total space geek. I saw this tweet from @NASA on my Twitter page just a short time ago, and got very stupidly excited:
And of course my first thought was, I wonder if they’ll have any pieces left over when they’re done. Anyway, it looks like the treadmill will be in use very soon! If I come across any more extensive updates, I’ll pass them along.
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Welcome home, Discovery!
Posted by: | CommentsHey Zoners! We can start off the weekend with some excellent news: the space shuttle Discovery landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California just a short time ago. After two weeks, 5.7 million miles, and 219 orbits, the STS-128 mission is now complete. During the mission, the crew completed three spacewalks, moved 7.5 tons of supplies and new equipment onto the space station, including the COLBERT, and packed up a couple of tons of equipment and trash to return from orbit with them. Also returning on Discovery: astronaut Tim Kopra, who spent 58 days aboard the space station, and a Buzz Lightyear action figure that’s been at the space station since May 2008.
As soon as video of the landing is available, I’ll add it to the post. In the meantime, a big welcome home to Discovery’s crew, and a big “thank you” from the Colbert Nation for helping to put the Colbert name into space. Congratulations on a successful mission!
Edit: And as promised, here’s the video of the landing. How amazing is it that these orbiters can blast off with a spectacular show of force, travel millions of miles in orbit, then come in for a landing that looks as smooth and easy as any plane?
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NASA update: Shuttle Discovery landing postponed one day
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Discovery in orbit. Photo credit: NASA
So Discovery’s crew will get a bonus day in space while they prepare for landing tomorrow. They deserve a chance to relax a bit and enjoy the view after completing a successful mission. If you’d like to follow the preparations for landing, check NASA’s shuttle landing blog, which will starting covering the day’s activities several hours before the first scheduled landing opportunity. Hopefully all will go as planned tomorrow and Discovery’s crew will be back home safely.
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Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – September 6, 2009
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Hey, Zoners, I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far. It’s been relatively quiet on the Colbert news front, with the notable exceptions of the arrival of the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. at the International Space Station, and of course the new issue of Rolling Stone with Stephen on the cover and a fantastic feature article. (If you haven’t picked that up yet, run, don’t walk, to your nearest magazine seller and get a copy. You don’t want to miss this article.) Only one more week of break to get through, folks, and I think we might just about manage it. Here’s a selection of the Colbert news that’s been floating around the Interwebs, your zeitgeist for September 6th.
More COLBERT updates
- Over on the Colbert Nation boards, ronsmytheiii has been posting updates on STS-128 as the mission progresses, and recently posted a diagram of the COLBERT and pictures of the rack base that will hold the treadmill. You can view those here.
- Following up on that hilarious fake press release that was included in the daily execute package sent to Discovery’s crew earlier this week, a friend of mine who works for NASA shared an additional bit of info about it:
The folks that come up with this is the Flight Activities Officer (FAO) and the backroom position MATS who puts together the execute package each morning that is uplinked to the crew and printed on board. … Most of the time the subject matter or the joke is … relevant to anything comical going on in the flight control room or onboard. Most of the time it involves taking some serious jabs at each other involving a lot of engineer geek humor.
Well hey, if there’s anyone who gets geek humor, we do around here. (Okay, maybe not engineer geek humor…) So the humor is usually some kind of inside joke, but not this time. Whoever came up with it did a genius job, right down to the use of “thingy.” NASA folks are such it-getters.
Creating comedy
- Fight It, Colbert, Fight It! Also, Comedy That Goes Somewhere – Macleans.ca
In addition to reporting on Allison Silverman’s departure from TCR, this article from Maclean’s discusses writing comedy in general, and writing for the Report as compared to The Daily Show: …[I]t seems like Colbert would be a more demanding show to work on than The Daily Show, because Colbert has to be in-character with everything he says, so they can’t just write straightforward jokes; every joke has to be a commentary on current events and something the Colbert character would plausibly say. (And then there’s “The Wørd,” where they have to write those two-level jokes while also coming up with jokes for the talking-points sidebar.)
Stephen Colbert as The Riddler?
- Riddle Me This: Why Not Let Stephen Colbert Play the Riddler? – Huffington Post: The Riddler is intellectually curious, wickedly funny, and relentlessly creative — all of the things I would associate with Stephen Colbert. Add in the usual debauchery, mischief and shenanigans and Colbert could really pull it off.
Okay, having Stephen play The Riddler in the next Batman movie sounds like a great idea, but Stephen has this little problem called time. Most importantly, the lack of it. When would he fit movie-making into his insane schedule? Not that I don’t think he could do a good job, but honestly, it would be virtually impossible for him to do it. Interesting suggestion, though.
Something for the fangirls
- Ultimate Hotties: EW’s staff picks – EW.com’s Popwatch: Mandi Bierly: 10 Hot Men From The Past Year: #4 Stephen Colbert: I just wanna sit in bed and watch a Golden Girls marathon with him, which is how I know when I really like a guy. (Which explains why I’m still single?)
I could argue with her placement of Stephen at #4 on that list, but at least she had the good taste to put True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgård at #2.
Add a touch of Colbert to your iGoogle page
- A Little Bit of Truthiness on your iGoogle Page with Stephen Colbert Quotes – MalekTips.com: If you’re a fan of “The Colbert Report” and cannot get enough of Stephen Colbert (especially during multi-week show breaks), display a daily quote on your iGoogle page with the “Stephen Colbert Quote of the Day” gadget for iGoogle. In the spirit of one of the sketches on his show… Web browser side effects may include: Phantom double mouse pointers, spontaneous bookmark combustion, involuntary back button spinning, and Wandering Web Address Bar Syndrome.
One of these things is not like the others
- Donohue’s book now available – Catholic League press release: The Catholic League has chosen to promote the new book by their president (and former TCR guest) William Donohue, Secular Sabotage : How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America by releasing a few endorsement blurbs from a fairly predictable group of suspects, with one notable exception: “Wake up, America! The secular minority has cut the brake cables on America’s In-God-We-Trust-Mobile! Not even all 43 of our Christian presidents can save us now.” — Stephen Colbert, host of “The Colbert Report” (Yeah, I think someone at the Catholic League didn’t quite get the joke. Stephen’s blurb bears absolutely no resemblance to any of the others.)
Random name dropping
- I don’t have a link for this one, but Jenny with a Y caught a reference to Stephen in a “Sound of Young America” podcast that featured someone from Second City. This person claims that Stephen still holds the record for selling the most Second City t-shirts ever when he worked in the gift shop there. I believe it. All he’d have to do is smile at me and I’d buy one.
(h/t DB, Ms I, Jennie, Jenny with a Y, and extra thanks to my nameless buddy at NASA)
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