NASA via Getty Images, Simitrios Kambouris/ Getty ImagesA tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert's mighty effort. A wag of the finger to NASA's refusal to give the funnyman his due.
Though NASA's powers that be have refused to name a node (aka a room) on the International Space Station after the Colbert Report host, the government agency said Monday that they are naming a high-tech treadmill after the Emmy winner instead.
The Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) will be operational starting in August, and will then be used to keep our on-duty astronauts in tip-top shape for years to come.
Meanwhile, Node 3 will be called Tranquility, despite Colbert's overwhelming success as a write-in candidate to have the room named after him.
"I have taken a bunch of cough syrup, so it feels like I'm floating," Colbert said tonight in
anticipation of what he thought was going to be an even shinier moment.
"We have come up with something that will be in Node 3 eventually," offered astronaut and space-station veteran Sunita Williams, who ran the first marathon in space on a treadmill similar to the COLBERT.
But could NASA still be nursing a grudge because "Colbert" originally beat out sanctioned names like "Serenity," "Legacy," "Earthrise" and "Venture"?
"We don't typically name U.S. space station hardware after living people and this is no exception," NASA's Bill Gerstenmaier said cryptically. "We have invited Stephen to Florida for the launch of COLBERT and to Houston to try out a version of the treadmill that astronauts train on."