[FPSPACE] RE: Space Station Alpha (or, 'Three rabbis walk into a space cent er...")

[CHARLES, JOHN B. (JSC-SF2)]

During my stint manning a booth for the Johnson Space Center's "Inspection
2000" yesterday, a visiting rabbi stopped to chat.  My booth deals with the
Bioastronautics "Critical Path Roadmap" which specifies 55 biomedical risks
and the 247 associated critical questions that our group believes need to be
addressed before we send people to Mars.  The rabbi (part of a group of
three apparently on-site for a lunch-time seminar) noticed that one of our
risks is "human performance failure due to poor psychosocial adaptation."
He asked if I had heard about that very issue on ISS already.  I answered
that I assumed that he meant the "Alpha" thing.  He then told me a story
(which I will garble, unfortunately) about a NY Times article after Sputnik
was launched which made an analogy between a rocket launch pad and the Tower
of Babel.  The rabbi said that rabbinical writings mention that the Tower of
Babel project to reach heaven came undone over some sort of controversy
involving a name (what was being named was not clear to me).  Anyway, he was
delighted to see such a parallel with current events.

So, as a permanent name for ISS Alpha, I vote for "Tower of Babel" (or
something similar).  And my apologies for being so poorly informed on
matters rabbinical...

John Charles
Houston, Texas