Dark Comedy – 220 Miles Above the Earth

Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper is an astronaut. Now nicknamed "Lost-in-Space" Heide

And Heide’s not your garden-variety space explorer. She remodels space stations. Her show doesn’t have a name yet but I’m proposing two possibilities – Extremely Extreme Makovevers or Awesomely Awesome Makovers. Of course these may soon morph into Extremely Awesome Makeovers or Awesomely Extreme Makeovers but I’m sure you get the general drift.

I never thought when I was reading Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober (thinly disguised gay porn), that I would ever see "Heidi in space." There are no goats miles above the earth’s surface but there are bags of tools to herd. And apparently Heide didn’t have such a great day. It seems her "grease gun" went off and left an oily mess in her bag and on her gloves and all over her helmet cam. And while using a dry wipe she let a $100,000 tool kit she signed for (and that doesn’t count the cost of boosting the 30 pound set of tools into space or the salvage value it would ultimately bring on Ebay). And now, according to NASA, "The bag that got away is still in the neighborhood of the shuttle-station complex but is expected to fall out of orbit fairly soon." Now with my luck and penchant for dark comedy it should land in my backyard upon me or my favorite orange cat. Here you see O.C. (Orange Cat) helping my credibility by pretending to have been hit by a space wench, I mean wrench. Of course the tools my burn up on reentry or just get hot enough to cauterize the wound where my head used to be. And on the bright side, me or my cat won’t bleed much. You see there’s always something to be grateful. You just have to look.

Heide’s response to her loss: "Oh, great!" Now what kind of response is that for a U.S. Navy captain? I’m disappointed, what are they teaching at the Naval Academy? Since when do they not teach Cursing 101. Any seaman or seagal worth their salt can curse.

Well I was mistaken, it seems our Heide went to MIT. In fact she was the MVP on her crew team. Then she went on to earn a masters of engineering and ROTC. Who knew that you could march your way right into space?

It seems our Heide has been to space before and she’s logged 12 days in space and 13 hours and eight minutes playing outside the space station. She has performed so well she is the first woman to become a lead space walker.

What’s this got to do with black comedy? If she’d compounded the error with a swan dive into the great abyss it had the potential for great dark comedy. Or if the other astronauts had shunned her and not let her back inside the station it could have been a great Movie of the Week (it will anyway but with less darkly comedic undertones). Now our only chance for dark comedy is Heide’s reaction to this honest mistake.

I’m hoping the other astronauts won’t decide to follow suit for the attention-getting possibilities but perhaps we as a nation can laugh at this and maybe it will provide a momentary respite from the landslide of economic terror. And maybe the loss of the tool bag will keep a few more engineers employed and coming up with 9 sigma systems for preventing the loss of any more of NASA’s toys.

So what’s the point of all this pile of sarcasm? It seems to me Heide has become a more valuable astronaut. And, no, she should not become the Bill Buckner of the space program. Now everyone has heard of her and we’ve made a substantial investment in her real-world training she should make the rounds of late night television. It might take our minds off the crazy astronaut chick who drove thousands of miles in diapers and the fact that one of the purposes of this NASA mission is to install a machine that recycles sweat, condensation and urine into potable drinking water on the space station. That’s a fact that you won’t see in the "So-you-want-to-be-an-astronaut books.

But there are dangers lurking for our Heide. The first is the reaction of the folks she works for and with. They can make her a pariah and she could be drummed out of NASA. Or perhaps worse, become a land-locked astronaut.

The second and more realistic danger is that she may not be able to forgive herself. You see Heide is a high achiever and a leader and sometimes people who excel have an Achilles heel – intolerance of their own errors. It’s only through forgiveness that she will continue to reach her potential as Heide of the skies and beyond!

P.S. I am going to send a letter to NASA with a strongly worded recommendation that Heide take a class in remedial cursing. I do think this would continue to uphold the glorious reputation the U.S. navy has earned.