Continuing with NASA’s tradition of trail-blazin’ innovation, today the space agency announced that astronaut Suni Williams will run the Boston Marathon at the International Space Station on a treadmill. “This will be the first time an astronaut in space will be an official participant in a marathon”.
THAT IS SO STUPID. (I never use all capital letters for emphasis. Only a taxpayer-funded, bureaucratic, hive mind PR campaign could drive me to typographical dramatics).
For starters, one is not ‘running the Boston Marathon’ simply because they begin to run on the third Monday of April at 10am EST. They have to be on the historic 80-year old course, starting in Hopkinton and spurred to the finish line in Copley Square by ebullient crowds of Bay Staters. If the Boston Marathon is opened up to proxy locations, well, people are going to be ‘running the Boston Marathon’ in Detroit. Hell, if 26.2 miles on a treadmill counts, well, this year I plan to ‘run the Boston Marathon’ by jogging in place for 6 hours in my apartment while watching the Game Show Network. Where’s my press release?
Williams hopes that her run will inspire children to embrace daily physical fitness: “I think a big goal like a marathon will help get this message out there.” Yes kids, if an astronaut can run a marathon in space, surely you can set a loftier ambition than mastering the art of eating with one hand and playing Second Life with the other.
By trumpeting this uber role model and her dubious feat, NASA wants to ween the public’s mind away from former astronaut Lisa Nowak’s unseemly attempted kidnapping. Perhaps they should have chosen an endeavor that does not allow people to legitimately wonder: Are adult diapers involved?
Okay, after that cheap-shot mention of The Adult Diaper, I will crawl back to a substantive rant: When it comes to real innovation, NASA may soon be eclipsed by private industry. SpaceX, a space tech company founded by the guy who started PayPal, is perfecting rocket launching… slowly, but surely. Check out the video of last week’s test launch of the Falcon 1. Stellar.
