WEEKLY WHINE
Guess what! Yesterday at 19:59 UTC, the space shuttle orbiter Endeavour docked with the International Space Station carrying the P6 truss segment and its attached solar arrays. The segment will be attached today by STS-97 Mission Specialist 1 Joseph Tanner and Mission Specialist 3 Carlos Noriega as they go EVA, whilst Mission Specialist 2 Marc Garneau runs the Canadarm.
If you've noticed, the ISS crew, comprised of Commander Bill Shepherd, Soyuz Commander Yuri Gidzenko, and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev, has been using the call sign "Alpha" in their discussions with Mission Control, Endeavour, and the rest of the world. This is because "International Space Station" takes too long to say and "ISS" just sounds dumb.
When the station was being developed, it was originally called "Freedom". But then Congress hacked away at it until it was an orbiting tin can. Deciding that "orbiting tin can" was a bad name for a station, NASA then gave it the temporary name "Alpha". When Russia was added to the list of partners, it was then called the International Space Station in hopes that a good name would eventually be invented. But so far it hasn't, and while "Alpha" is interesting, it's not quite right for the most advanced spacecraft ever built. But we at GoobNet, always civic minded, have chosen this particular problem as one to resolve this week. Coming up right now: better names for the International Space Station.
| Freedom | Blast from the past. Actually, Freedom is a pretty good name. We are free to redesign it or to delay its completion for any of a billion reasons. |
| Impulse | Ever made an impulse purchase? That's when you put down some money for an object without really considering the results. |
| SuperStation | The ISS is easily much more deserving of that title than is TBS. |
| Shallow Space 9 | Well, come on. It's low Earth orbit. It's not deep at all. |
| Orbiting Outpost | Reporters seem to call it an "orbiting outpost" all the time. We might as well make that the name. |
| Morpheus | Essentially, it is going to be metamorphosing every time a component is added or moved. |
| Bill Lee | Why not name it after the Spaceman? |
| Conrad | "That may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me!" |
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