NASA astronaut Sunita Williams visited The Colbert Report to announce the name of the new room of the International Space Station.  Despite winning the internet poll by a wide margin, Stephen Colbert’s name will not be used on Node 3 of the ISS.  Instead, NASA has chosen Tranquility, which was the 8th most popular response in the original poll.

That doesn’t mean that Colbert has been snubbed completely.  NASA has instead chosen to name a treadmill after the late-night talk show host.  However, NASA gave Colbert the run-around on that too because the treadmill isn’t named after Colbert but rather has an acronym that spells Colbert.  The treadmill’s official name is Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).

The Colbert campaign was all in good fun and Stephen never had any realistic expectation to get his name on the space station.  However, NASA’s move to choose its own name for the room is a slap in the face to people who voted in the first place.  If they threw out Colbert for the runner-up, then all would be good.  If NASA had Tranquility in mind as a name from the get-go, they why hold the vote in the first place?