THE HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT BLOG: From the Space Shuttle to Beyond

NASA Merges With NASCAR... This satirical article by The Onion is more than 10 years old, but it’s still funny anyway. And for the record, the shuttle’s name is spelled Endeavour, not Endeavor. Oh well. Blame the British (Endeavour was the name of a British ship, commanded by James Cook, more than 200 years ago. Hey, this Blog was nerdy already) for adding a ‘u’ after ‘o’ in words like that, as well as flavour and labour. And spelling theater ‘theatre’ and kilometer ‘kilometre’. Okay, I’m veering waaay off-topic here. Just check out that article.



Courtesy of The Onion

UPDATE (December 9): The reason why the Onion article is relevant right now is because space shuttle Atlantis, which is now scheduled to launch on flight STS-122 in January, is carrying onboard three green starting flags from the Daytona 500. Both NASA and NASCAR's "Great American Race" are celebrating their 50th anniversary next year. Once Atlantis lands after STS-122, one of the green flags will be waved at the beginning of the race in Florida next year, the second flag will be given to the winning Daytona driver, and NASA will keep the third.


NASA