Conference 7.286::space

34.0. "Toys in the Space Shuttle" by GRDIAN::K_MOREAU () Sat Feb 02 1985 16:55

Heard on "All Things Considered...":

NASA is going to put together some educational stuff for kids about the shuttle.
This is apparantly not as easy as it sounds, because kids (4 - 8 years?) do not
understand the significance of some actions (ie, most adults would be impressed
when they see the astronaut walking up a wall, letting a pencil go and it does
not fall to the ground, etc, but most kids don't see the significance of these
things, especially after years of SFX movies).  So what NASA is doing is sending
up some kids toys for the astronauts to play with, and take movies of them doing
so, and then show these movies at elementary schools.  (By the way, this is the
same mission that the Senator is going on).

Anyway, the crew is having quite a bit of fun with this.  One of them is going
for a new record in "Jacks" (because the ball won't come down for quite a while
and he can pick up all of the jacks), one of them is bringing an "oy-oy" (a
yo-yo played upside down), and the commander is bringing a toy mouse with him.
The name of the mouse (inevitably) is:

				"The Rat Stuff"

								Ken Moreau

Sounds like they borrowed that from the shirts made for last
year's worldcon (world science fiction convention).  It had a
picture of a rat with a fishbowl-style helmet and back-mounted
air tank and the caption "The Rat Stuff".

The story goes that representatives from NASA were at the convention
and when they saw the t-shirts, they sent the info back to the
astronauts who reported said that they had to get some for a
future mission.