SpaceX named their recovery sea vessels 'Just Read The Instructions' and 'Of Course I Still Love You', after the Iain M Banks sci-fi Culture ships.

I wonder which of their vessels will win GCU Grey Area for its name.

If Elon launches a space vessel named 'Grey Area', I either want to be on it, or in a bunker.

I don't think you're the target demo for the cutesy circus events. Unlike SpaceX, NASA needs all the public exposure and goodwill it can get, which is what the Twitter accounts are for. There are plenty of data and science-heavy websites for the non-casual user.

That's exactly my point. SpaceX doesn't need to name the dummies, nor judging by their history they would want to.

Just Read The Instructions

Of Course I Still Love You

Fair enough. I concede the defeat.

Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori.

That's a quite myopic view of both NASA and SpaceX. The cutesy circus is pretty much a necessary condition of scientific popularisation-- NASA's social media experiments have been incredibly successful ways of getting the public to engage in space travel and science in a way that wasn't ever prevalent before.

It's trite, but also mandatory. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX didn't take some things tongue-in-cheek too; a war against humour is one nobody wants to fight. Except Boeing executives.

The trouble with wars against humour, is they tend to be really funny.

> unlike Nasa^H^H^H^HESA they tend not to make cutesy circus out of their projects

They dress the dummy up like a cowboy.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2012/12/A-2IXbMCEA...

Capt. "Ace" Owens?

BTW, the cute Rosetta was from ESA PR, not NASA.

...indeed it was/is and I knew that. Thanks.

Did you know the Dragon capsule was named after the song "Puff The Magic Dragon"?

edit - and a wheel of Le Brouère cheese was on the first Dragon flight in honour of the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch.