The five hour space walk was the fifth for the Endeavour crew, in itself an impressive accomplishment. The five-spacewalk benchmark is one that most shuttle crews don't meet. This spacewalk was a chance for the crew to accomplish a variety of small upkeep and upgrading tasks for the station, including a camera on the porch of a new Japanese space lab.

There have never been as many people gathered together in one place in space as there are now. Seven of the current space station occupants are leaving with Endeavour on Friday, cutting the record-breaking space party short. Here's hoping the future holds a never ending airborne party like the one in Life, the Universe, and Everything, with periodic NASA shuttles delivering guacamole and refreshments every few months.

Endeavour Crew Perform Final Spacewalk [via Discovery]

Star Trek: The Federation may have given us huge advances in transportation and energy-matter conversion, but their toilet technology is decidedly dull. The most advanced feature on the brig toilet seen in The Undiscovered Country is that it pops out of the wall. And, sadly, Federation loos are hardly immune to wear and tear; at one point during the Voyager's journey, the ship was down to a mere four functional lavs. And, if Jonathan Frakes is to be believed, the situation on the Enterprise-D is even more dire:

Galaxy Quest: In a bit of oversight, the creators of the non-existent television series Galaxy Quest failed to include even a single bathroom in the official blueprints for the NSEA Protector. Fortunately, a deleted scene reveals that, despite mistaking the TV episodes for actual historical documents, those ingenious Thermians recognized the need for mammalian waste extraction. It probably works, but by the time you figure out how, it would be far too late:

Dr. Lazarus - Galaxy Quest

Lexx: Off-beat space opera Lexx never shied away from toilet humor, so it figures that the ship's toilet would be, well, humorous. The titular living ship naturally has an organic lavatory, complete with a tongue, so you can finish your bowel movement with that fresh, just-licked-by-a-giant-space-bug clean feeling.

Babylon 5: The Babylon 5 space station plays host to a number of species, many with unique physiological properties. While human males can opt for the classic urinal, station toilets come equipped with attachments to accommodate other anatomies. As for species with more offensive excretory processes – such as the carrion-eating pak'ma'ra – they get their own facilities.

Firefly: As a general rule, everything on the smuggling ship Serenity is always breaking down, but the toilets seem to be the only things Kaylee isn't constantly repairing. Perhaps that's because they're the model of simplicity: sleeping-car style cans that, like the Federation brig toilets, pull out from the wall.

My Teacher Glows in the Dark by Bruce Coville: When Peter Thompson travels through space to meet with an interplanetary council, he discovers that the most difficult part of the mission may not be convincing the aliens not to destroy humanity, but figuring out how to use the facilities:

Give me the code for a bathroom, please," I said to the URAT.

"Insufficient data."

"What do you mean?" I cried, crossing my legs.

"I do not know what kind of bathroom you need. We have fifty-three different types of facilities."

I remembered the octopi toilets, or whatever they were, that I had seen on the first chart. Given the variety of aliens I had met already, it made sense that the ship needed a lot of different bathrooms.

"I'm glad I'm not the plumber for this place," I muttered.

"Yes," agreed the URAT, "that would be a disaster."

"Look, I don't need to be insulted by a machine. Just tell me how to find a bathroom!"

The URAT informed me that it needed to know more about me. After it had asked fifteen or twenty questions, some of them very personal, it finally gave me a bathroom code.

Not a moment too soon! I thought, as I punched the code into the control pad. I stepped into a bathroom that was only mildly odd – which is to say that it only took me about five minutes (five desperate minutes) to figure out how to use it.

Battlestar Galactica: The bathroom holds particular dramatic significance for BSG's doctor/Cylon collaborator/nymph squad prophet Gaius Baltar. It's where Laura Roslin asks him to be her vice president – and where she later threatens to hang his presidential portrait. It's also where he gets stared down by a supremely pissed-off (and audibly pissing) Starbuck. Of course, while the toilets in the Colonial Fleet seem to work, there's never enough toilet paper and the stall doors just won't stay closed.

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams: The Starship Bistromath does away with the need for plumbing altogether. By placing the teleportation cubicles in the bathrooms, Slartibartfast has ensured that any toilet issues can be resolved by simply teleporting the offending substances elsewhere.

Star Kid: When Spencer Griffith finds an alien Cybersuit, the issue isn't whether the suit's functions (including one for waste collection) work, it's whether Spencer can think of the proper term for communicating his rather urgent needs to the suit's AI (starting at 9:58):

When John Glenn first when into space, the sustanance astronauts were expected to eat could hardly be considered food: pastes, cubes, and powders provided the necessary protein and vitamins, but were found universally unpalatable. Although the food options more closely resemble what you’d find on Earth, foods sent into space still need to be pre-cooked, preserved, and rendered bacteria free. And the relationship between NASA’s Thanksgiving dinner and the traditional feast are largely superficial:

For the Thanksgiving dinner, the smoked turkey was irradiated and the green beans and dressing were freeze-dried, a form of dehydration. The candied yams and dessert were heated.

A week before Thanksgiving, NASA gave reporters a taste-test of the astronauts' holiday dinner. The smoked turkey was slightly stiffer than deli meat, like after it has been left in the refrigerator a week past its expiration date. The candied yams had a syrupy sweetness outside that dissolved into blandness in the middle. The green beans with mushrooms tasted like they have been frozen and then microwaved to an inch of their life.

The saving grace was a sublime cranapple dessert. There was a tartness to the apples and sweetness to the cranberries mixed with pecans and syrup in a dish that resembles cobbler filling.

The crew of the space shuttle Endeavour, which is currently docked at the Space Station brought the meal with them along with them the station’s first-ever food refrigerator, so the occupants might enjoy another Thanksgiving tradition: leftovers.

[Discovery News]

Colbert is reportedly delighted by the prospect of his off-world immortality:

I am thrilled to have my DNA shot into space, as this brings me one step closer to my lifelong dream of being the baby at the end of 2001.

But he won’t be alone. Garriott seeks to preserve certain portions of humanity in the event that the Space Station becomes mankind’s final legacy:

The Immortality Drive is a digital archive of mankind's greatest achievements and a snapshot of humanity itself. This archive will be stored on the International Space Station to serve as a remote "offsite backup" of humanity, should we suffer a disastrous fate.

Garriott has enabled players on his newest MMORPG, Tabula Rasa, to upload their characters and personal messages to the Immortality Drive, and has chosen a select few whose DNA, like Colbert’s, will be digitized and preserved. So what does it take to have your genome sent to space? Below are the current Immortality Drive inductees:

Entrepreneurs:
• Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, Pownce, and Revision3
• Tim Draper, venture capitalist and viral marketing innovator
• Robert Scoble, technology evangelist and business blogger

Athletes:
• Scott Johnson, Olympic gold medal gymnast
• Matt Morgan, American Gladiator and professional wrestler

Musicians:
• Joe Ely, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
• Stephen Bruton, producer and blues guitarist
• Eric Johnson, guitarist and instrumental composer
• Patrice Pike, singer, songwriter, and reality show participant

Writers:
• Tracy Hickman, novelist and game designer (Dragonlance, The Darksword Trilogy, The Death Gate Cycle)
• Scott Murphy, television and screenwriter (Angel, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Flash Gordon)
• Clifford Green, screenwriter (Spacecamp, The Seventh Sign)
• Christiana Miller, television writer (General Hospital, Star Trek: Voyager)
• Daniel Fiorella, television and radio writer, magazine contributor (Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, A Prairie Home Companion, Mad Magazine, Cracked)
• Doug Molitor, television writer (Sliders, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men: Evolution)
• Ian Abrams, television writer and producer, director of the screenwriting and playwriting program at Drexel University.
• Melvyn B. Sherer, television writer and Andy Kaufman collaborator (Married with Children, Happy Days, Small Wonder)
• Steven Melching, television and screenwriter (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Men in Black: The Series, X-Men: The Animated Series)
• Heather E. Ash, television writer (Stargate SG-1)

The post-human future, it seems, will be ruled by the television writers.

Image by Todd Lockwood.

Stephen Colbert to have his DNA sent into space [AP]
Operation Immortality

Rule Number One: Make good use of wall space. As you can see from the picture of Zvezda's eating area above, every part of the wall has been turned into storage. Fruits and meals are strapped to the wall, along with utensils. The fridge is set into the wall over the table. Of course it's a little harder to strap things to the wall in Earth gravity, but there are still plenty of ways to make good use of wall space. You can put up shelves relatively cheaply, or get wall hangers for file folders and books.

Rule Number Two: Be sure there are a lot of windows and private spaces, even if they aren't very big. In the picture above, you see one of the Zvezda sleeping pods, which may be tiny but keeps the cosmonauts happy by having a closing door and gorgeous view from the window portal. The pods got a rave review from former NASA astronaut John Blaha, who slept in an identical space pod on the space station Mir:

You can kind of just lay there in your sleeping bag, look outside into space, and dream. You're either looking out at the stars, or you're looking at the planet (Earth), or you're looking at the horizon. It's like your bedroom. It's your place, and nobody else goes in there.

Rule Number Three: Every space should have at least three uses. Here you can see one of the astronauts talking on a ham radio that goes through a ceiling-mounted laptop (sorry, ceiling mounting may not be as convenient on Earth). Behind him, underneath the pictures, is a treadmill. So this area is for communications, computing, and exercising. Again, this is almost a no-brainer for Earth-dwellers. You can, for example, use a kitchen table as an eating area, work space, and entertainment zone if you've got a sturdy table, a few chairs, and a laptop.

Of course, the ISS doesn't always look uncluttered, as you can see. Here's their laptop farm:

Images courtesy of NASA.

Says Nader Elhefnawy:

[James] started with thinly-sketched claims about Soviet capabilities and programs for which the evidence was slim, and then extrapolated from them in a frictionless universe where unproven technologies never disappoint and bureaucratic irrationality never gets in the way.

In other words, by focusing on the absolute worst case, James helped make the Cold War that much more frenzied. It's an important lesson for the next time futurists make teeth-grinding predictions about Chinese space mastery or super-terrorists. But is anyone willing to learn it?

Space War and Future Hype [Plausible Futures]