Studly Astronaut From L.A. County High School To Command NASA's 'Discovery' Mission
Updated after the jump: NASA has postponed the 39th and final Discovery mission until at least Nov. 30. Well, that was anticlimactic. Originally posted at 11:04 a.m.
NASA Temple City High, Class of 1978
Venice has Morrison; Long Beach has Snoop; Compton has the venerable Coolio.
Now, the San Gabriel Valley can start chipping away at its own sweet plaza statue -- in the likeness of Temple City High graduate Steve Lindsey, who has been chosen as commander for an 11-day voyage on the Discovery, lifting off today from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
What's different about this Discovery mission than the last 38, you ask? Only that it's carrying the first humanoid robot to ever leave the face of the Earth.
No, not Lindsey.
Temple City High is so stoked right now. It was clearly the astronaut's rigorous SAT training -- not his master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology -- that got him where he is today. (Wait, did they have SATs in the '70s?)
In other TCH Alumni News, "jjenkins" reports to the Class of 1960:
"Sorry I missed the reunion. It just was not possible in this time frame."
One Yelper, a frustrated "Claudia C," argues that TCH may not be the fine institution of learning this NASA publicity makes it out to be:
"I go here. I hate it. I will never like it. I'm active in ths school, but I will never love it. I should've gone to LACHSA.This is a boring school with boring people, majority of which are Asian. There is no ethnic diversity. Some of the teachers aren't bad, and we're really competitive with Arcadia, who say we suck. We kind of do.
There's not much of a popularity circle or anything here, we're all just in big clumps. ASB rules the school. ASB is biased."
Don't worry, Claudia. After 30 more years of education, you too could be cramped in a zero-oxygen space taxi, toting spare parts to the International Space Station with a humanoid robot at your side.
Update: The New York Times reports that NASA has delayed Lindsey's launch for at least a month, thanks to a leak in the shuttle's carrier plate.
Oh, and then there was that seven-inch crack in the tank's protective foam insulation -- which inspectors didn't discover until after the launch had been called off.
Sketch.
Thirty-eight trips to outer space (as the International Space Station's bitch, no less) have made the once-gallant Discovery into one hell of a fixer-upper. We can't imagine our favorite Temple City High alumnus is feeling too hot about this whole "commander" thing anymore.
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