Whedonesque : Comments on 19892 : NASA announces name for Space Module.

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April 15 2009

NASA announces name for Space Module. Prepare for disappointment. Colbert didn't win, and neither did the Browncoats. Two Fandoms snubbed at once, but Colbert Did manage to get something named after him.

TDBrown | Firefly&Serenity | 06:21 CET | 37 comments total | tags: serenity, nasa

Dude. Not cool.

(About Serenity, at least. I don't care about Colbert.)

sunshineguinn | April 15, 06:27 CET

Not cool about either, since Colbert is awesome, and Serenity goes without saying.

SteppeMerc | April 15, 06:50 CET

I wonder if tranquility is a subtle nod to Serenity being the non-write in winner being similar words and all.

bedukay | April 15, 06:51 CET

I wonder if tranquility is a subtle nod to Serenity being the non-write in winner being similar words and all.

Well, "tranquility" is the first symbol in Chinese for "serenity". Maybe. It's still not the same, though. :-/

phyrelight | April 15, 06:57 CET

Epic fail. Why bother to have people vote, if you're not planning on taking those votes into consideration? I understand not using Colbert, since it was a write in, but Serenity was one of THEIR choices - why choose Tranquility instead? Color me annoyed.

ladygrey | April 15, 07:22 CET

Boooo

Salocin | April 15, 07:23 CET

Oh my god, that pisses me off so much. We voted our asses off, and we didn't get it? :(

Allen Doyle | April 15, 07:38 CET

So, let me see if I have this straight. You give people a choice of four names, and allow them to write in their own choices. Then at the end, you take NEITHER the top vote-getter among the write-in selections (Colbert), NOR the top vote-getter among the four original choices (Serenity), even though they placed first and second respectively.

Instead, you select a name that already HAS a history at NASA, and which could have finished no higher than third in the overall balloting. (Anybody know the total number of votes for Tranquility?) Look, I like the name. I think it's beautiful. But to allow the people to vote, and then to not choose a name that won the balloting, at least in some sense, seems wrong.

BAFfler | April 15, 07:40 CET

EXACTLY what I said was going to happen. Colbert gave NASA a reason to decide that discretion would mean ignoring the poll results completely instead of using number 1 or number 2. You've got to know how NASA thinks, and this is how NASA thinks.

[ edited by Simon on 2009-04-15 08:07 ]

KingofCretins | April 15, 07:55 CET

Yeah, this seems a little bogus. I voted everyday for a month or so, for nothing?

goodridd | April 15, 07:57 CET

If people want to swear then they can do it elsewhere.

Simon | April 15, 08:05 CET

New Scientist Blog has the poll results.

[ edited by littlexander on 2009-04-15 10:18 ]

littlexander | April 15, 08:05 CET

Eh, it's their node, they can call it whatever they want. I think the treadmill thing is funny, though. Good compromise. As for not taking the Serenity name, I'm not all het up about that either, because it wasn't about the movie in the first place, we just gave it that association. It's not like they're naming it "Joss Smells" instead.

library hooligan | April 15, 08:15 CET

LOL library hooligan! Best. Node. Name. Ever.

ladygrey | April 15, 08:37 CET

"We totally stuffed a ballot and all we got was this lousy T-shirt. And we didn't actually get that either"

Can't say i'm even vaguely bothered.

Saje | April 15, 08:53 CET

I am satisfied with the outcome. The winner of the poll got something, and then they went ahead and named the node what they wanted.

The Operative | April 15, 09:04 CET

I don't know, if they had to name it something like Tranquility, why not Serenity? Maybe they're keeping the name for an actual spacecraft, eh? Not a big deal but it would have been cool.

nyrk | April 15, 09:15 CET

They never said they would name it after the biggest vote-getter (which was Colbert).

They may have decided not to let a fan-base win, because it was pretty obvious that was how they top choices got the votes.

redeem147 | April 15, 09:16 CET

I'm confused why people are getting so het up about this - as far as I understand it, the name didn't even have anything to do with Firefly, it was just a coincidence. Even Colbert seems to be taking this better, and he was the one who was really snubbed here ;)

(and IMO it's perfectly understandable that NASA didn't name the module after Colbert, seeing that the win was pretty much just a publicity stunt - they'd be naming modules after Pepsi and Coca Cola in the future if they took that road)

ruuger | April 15, 09:37 CET

The link doesn't work.

[ edited by Allen Doyle on 2009-04-15 10:10 ]

Allen Doyle | April 15, 10:02 CET

Treadmill acronym = funny, as is the logo.

"I think a treadmill is better than a node, you know why? Because the node is just a box for the treadmill," Colbert said. "Nobody says 'Hey, my mom bought me a Nike box.' They want the shoes that are inside."

[...]

"And however far the space station goes, my treadmill will always have gone a few miles more," Colbert said.

Heh :).

As for it not being 'Serenity' - if it actually had been a tribute to Firefly/Serenity, I'd be sorry to see it lose. As it is, it would've been fun to have us "win" it, but I can't really be bothered by the fact it didn't. Also: apareantly we only lost by 40,000 votes, meaning we still had 190,000 people voting for Serenity (and yes, the New Scientist link seems to confirm that). Given the fact that the next highest original option 'only' had 35,000 votes, that's a lot. Yikes.

(Also, 147,000 for 'myyearbook'... why? :))

GVH | April 15, 10:27 CET

Ah man...Tranquility is practically the same as Serenity. Why not just name it Serenity?

*pout*

ShanshuBugaboo | April 15, 12:19 CET

At least we can finally say goodbye to the endless "Stop Colbert" stories that keep showing up in my RSS reader...

Knuckleball | April 15, 12:31 CET

Yeah, it'll presumably change to "Stop C.O.L.B.E.R.T !" now.

Saje | April 15, 12:40 CET

Listen, and understand. C.O.L.B.E.R.T. is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

JesterInACast | April 15, 13:50 CET

I wonder if the guys who came up with the original list knew about the Serenity fandom or wether they thought it was just a nice nondescript word to fill out the list? I know we've seen the discs up there and everything, but astronauts and publicists are two entirely different groups of people.

ZodKneelsFirst | April 15, 13:54 CET

Nice nondescript word seems likely (it is pretty similar to e.g. 'Tranquility' both in meaning and cos there's a lunar "sea" of that name) but deliberate shout-out isn't impossible and AFAIK we don't know it isn't for sure (though a lot of people upthread seem pretty certain).

Saje | April 15, 14:09 CET

You say tomato, I say pimp.

:)

madmolly | April 15, 14:28 CET

This is the International Space Station module right?
Brazil has a share of the costs of it (probably 0.1%). So this thing really should have been named Serenity to we have "i" dot in our share. Tranquility also have the "i" but it's two and we could be lost there.

Brasilian Chaos Man | April 15, 16:26 CET

As BAFfler and Saje mentioned, "Tranquility" already has a history with NASA (it was the name of the Apollo 11 landing site--Tranquility Base, in the Sea of Tranquility). When they put "Serenity" on the ballot they were thinking of the Sea of Serenity, also on the moon, and forgot about there being a super-duper-awesome spaceship with the same name.

Once we rocked the vote we probably aced ourselves out of any chance of actually having it named Serenity, since the ISS obviously can't endorse a product or company and our beloved Serenity was, alas, a profit-seeking enterprise. Colbert, being a person first and a TV show second, is less of a problem and he only got a treadmill for his quarter-million votes.

LeafOnTheWind | April 15, 16:42 CET

Harrumph.

Craig Oxbrow | April 15, 17:05 CET

heh. It's cool, they can save Serenity for something a little more impressive.

flakbait | April 15, 17:43 CET

NASA handled the Colbert side of this great. They weren't going to name the node after him (nor, I would venture, did "the real" Stephen Colbert want them to). Still, they found a fun but meaningful way to include him. Win.

Then they took the next highest vote getter, highest among the names they suggested. Instead of using that name that 190 thousand people voted for, they used the name that means the same thing, but 4 thousand people voted for... Fail.

jam2 | April 15, 17:45 CET

It seems to me that NASA simply used mommy logic...when two kids are fighting over the same toy, neither one gets it. Although usually one of them doesn't end up with a treadmill.

mnspnr | April 15, 18:32 CET

NASA absolutely would have considered a risk to just skip Colbert and use Serenity, because they'd have thought the PR would have been that they were insulting him, specifically, by skipping him, specifically. So they bypassed the results altogether, which was the obvious and foreseeable consequence all along.

Colbert effed it up for the well-intentioned outreach of including Serenity on the list (clearly someone at NASA thinking that it would follow in the tradition of naming the original space shuttle glider "Enterprise").

KingofCretins | April 15, 21:24 CET

We should have suggested 'Vera'.

ZodKneelsFirst | April 15, 22:17 CET

Maybe one day, Serenity will be more than just a toilet.

edit: And I'm glad Galactica lost, considering the namesake's fate. And Xenu would have been funny.

[ edited by John Darc on 2009-04-17 10:12 ]

John Darc | April 17, 10:11 CET

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