Astronaut Contraption, by R.R. Anderson [Samgr / Flickr]
A couple weeks ago we asked you to send us your ideas for interesting contraptions to make out of the paraphernalia that astronaut Lisa Nowak brought with her on her long strange trip to Orlando. The comment thread got a little dark and literal, but you had some great ideas. Here is our favorite, with illustration, sent in by R. Ryan Anderson. (Click on the image for a larger version.) Congratulations to all!
The large garbage bags were to be weaved together with rubber tubing to form a giant air bladder which would be inflated with hot gas–produced by a spark from the firing mechanism of the BB gun held into the aerosol stream of the activated pepper spray canister.
Attaching her balloon to the cloth loops of her trench coat, the cosmonaut has effectively created a personal atmospheric flotation device. She could then navigate by map across boarders, oceans, mountains, dangerous mountain lions, vampires and saber tooth missionaries.
Despite her offensive capabilities such as: steel mallet, knife, BB gun, and biological weapons (read: expended adult diaper bombs) she was still vulnerable to attack by pterodactyl. Thats where the disguise came it handy. Using the wig, she was able to rig a very crude fake beard and mustache. No two pterodactyls are as stupid however so she would need a secret-reserve back up plan… You guessed it: six latex gloves that she could quickly inflate to sexually humiliate flying aggressors.
RicHard Ryan Anderson, in a comment to Open Source, February 8, 2007.
This ‘astronaut’ vaguely resembles Billy Gibbons or Dusty Hill of ZZ Top. Great idea and wonderful ‘blueprint’ rendering. So, what’s the door prize for Mr. Anderson?
Door prize is an ever-fashionable ROS tee shirt. The lucky devil.
To the engineers in the audience, sorry I didn’t make the balloon to scale in my illustration. I’ll try harder next time.
I guess I’m the only one, and I absolutely positively don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade or take away from the very very creative answers provided in response to ROS’s challenge (very well done, R.R.A., and I mean that sincerely!), but this whole thread (including the one leading to this one) unnerves me a bit. Actually, more than a bit. This woman is obviously suffering from some severe mental illness — these are not just the actions of a lovesick eccentric, but signs of deep disturbance. It seems odd to me that a show as fundamentally compassionate as ROS would hold her up to ridicule like this.
Again, I apologize if this seems judgmental, and I don’t mean to attack anyone for participating — it was a fun challenge. But let’s not forget that mental illness is still illness.
While I appreciate the sympathetic nod, I think it presumptous to assume that our creative astronaut is “mentally ill.”
How so? Mental illness is broad and varied, ranging from the experience of acute anxiety to full-blown psychosis to a lot of stuff in between. Frankly, I can’t look at the facts of this case and think of anything other than the acute distress associated with mental illness. This is no flake — it’s not easy to get where she’s gotten in life. This is someone who has fallen out of balance, and needs help.
The whole discussion makes me angry about how little time and patience our society has for understanding and remediating the challenges of mental illness, in all its forms. (One of the major news magazines has a cover story about men and depression, so I guess that’s something…) We would (and should) never ridicule someone suffering the effects of Parkinsons’ or cancer or MS or whatever, but we’re all too ready to dismiss the effects of mental illness as oddities to be made fun of and moved on from (or even, in the case of depression, sometimes admired as hallmarks of authenticity and connectedness). This approach disserves all of us, not just those who are suffering from these illnesses.
So there you have it, ROS — a rant that’s half pitch. You’ve got the news peg right here, and the topic couldn’t be more important to millions of Americans. Why do we dismiss (and mock) the suffering of so many when we would never do so if their illness were principally “physical” in nature? And what is to be done?
Oh, and one more thing — with due respect it’s not about “sympathy” — it’s about clear-headed analysis of ailments suffered by too many people all over the world, and what we can do to heal them. Your reference to sympathy was, of course, itself sympathetic, but it underscores the false sense that what the ill need is sympathy rather than treatment.
It would be nice to imagine that every time someone committed an act of violence or otherwise mystifying behavioral display that it was due to mental illness. While it is true that the mentally ill behave in this way, it is also true that these behaviors occur in people in possession of their faculties. I do not disagree with the meat of the half pitch rant, just the presumption that because this perpetrator is an female astronaut, the only and obvious explaination is mental illnesss. Would the conclusion be the same if this were a male astronaut? What about just a male? You can sympathize with anyone if you know their whole story. Do, in the end, agree that the circus surrounding the whole ordeal, contest included, was lacking in sensitivity.
It’s not just the astronaut, or female astronaut, angle. It’s the Depends (your joke was funny, by the way, and I will confess to having repeated it), the straight-through drive, and the odd assortment of stuff she took with her, with some apparent plan in mind. I fully agree that some violence is just violence, and certainly agree that people do wrong for reasons other than illness. I just have trouble looking at the facts here and seeing an ordinary bad — or even ordinarily desperate — actor. I see someone who has tricked herself into believing that her options were far more limited than they were, and taking actions evidencing a cornered-animal mentality — hallmarks of something going on upstairs.
All that said, if ROS were to do a show on this, it would be perfectly acceptable to ask the key question: Where do we and where should we draw the line between the choice to do something violent or offbeat or just “wrong” and mental illness? Between a perverse act or series of acts and a treatable condition?