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<br />Stephen Colbert Challenges NASA Over Node Name <br />Thursday , April 02, 2009 <br />By Tariq Malik <br /> <br /> — <br />Comedian Stephen Colbert is pulling out all the stops in his <br />campaign to have NASA name a new room of the International <br />Space Station after him. <br />"Well you voted, folks and look what happened," Colbert said <br />Monday night on his faux-conservative show "The Colbert Report" <br />on Comedy Central. "Unfortunately, Houston may have a problem <br />with it." <br />Colbert urged his viewers to write his name in during NASA's <br />recent voting poll to name Node 3, a new room for the space <br />station that will launch on a future shuttle mission. The move <br />apparently worked, with Colbert's write-in name nabbing more <br />than 230,000 votes, beating NASA's top suggestion Serenity by <br />more than 40,000 votes. <br />[Repeated queries by FOXNews.com to "The Colbert Report" <br />eventually resulted in a brief e-mail from his personal publicist: "No comment, thanks!"] <br />There has been some speculation on how NASA will respond to Colbert's popularity in space. NASA has said that while it <br />reserves the right to have the final word on Node 3's name, it would take write-in suggestions into consideration. <br />"We're still thinking about it," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations chief, on Saturday. <br />Some sources have suggested that NASA will meet Colbert's audience halfway by opting to name the space toilet for Node <br />3 after the comedian. Gerstenmaier, however, shared little during a Saturday briefing after the shuttle Discovery landed in <br />Florida. <br />"We have a plan and we're working with some folks," Gerstenmaier said. "And in a couple of weeks, you'll know what the <br />answer is." <br />In addition to writing in their suggestions, voters were given the opportunity to select a name from NASA's list — Serenity, <br />Earthrise, Legacy and Venture. <br />"Serenity? That's not a space station, that's an adult diaper," Colbert said. <br />Congress for Colbert <br />Node 3 is a new room for the space station that will launch aboard a NASA shuttle. It will include an astronaut toilet, eight <br />refrigerator-sized equipment racks and much of the station's life support gear. It will also be the site of an observation portal <br />to serve as the main workstation for the orbiting lab's robotic arm. <br />ADVERTISEMENT <br />Page 1 of 2FOXNews.com - Stephen Colbert Challenges NASA Over Node Name - Science News | ... <br />4/2/2009http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,512023,00.html