Senior NASA officials have not been all that concerned about the name-challenged laboratory. In fact, when informed of the crew's comments on the name, Administrator Goldin stated, "It's not Shep's place to name it." With a hint of irritation he added, "You want to know something? Let's work on building the station. We can get diverted with issues like that."
Shepherd's surprise request fell short of asking for a permanent name change for the research facility. He merely asked Goldin for "permission to take the radio call sign Alpha." Clearly caught off guard by the request, Goldin only agreed to the request "temporarily" until the end of Expedition One.
The use of the modifier "temporary" now has space officials wondering what will come next. NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown said as far as he was concerned, the lab "is still the International Space Station." Brown "fully believes" that Shepherd's request to use Alpha "is not unlike a call sign for a F-16 pilot." However, call signs in the military tend to be claimed by individual pilots, not their aircraft.
If it is decided to christen the station with a new name it is not clear how the process would be conducted. One official admitted that agreeing upon a name can be "a painful process." Issues of culture, language interpretations, and acronym usage can become complicated when dealing with 16 nations.
An inter-agency process in 1993 agreed upon five suitable names including, Alliance, Unity, Freedom, Aurora, and Alpha. Jeff Vincent, who at the time was the head of NASA public affairs, recalled that a list of pros and cons were generated for each name and presented to Administrator Goldin. From this list, the name Alpha was selected and forwarded to the Clinton White House for approval.
The decision package eventually ended up on the desk of the presidential policy advisor George Stephanopoulos. According to a former staffer who was part of the White House review gauntlet, Stephanopoulos questioned the need for a new name and wanted to know why the former Space Station Freedom designation couldn't be applied to the new configuration.
A second letter was sent over, this time recommending the name Freedom. From there, however, the trail has grown cold. No one seems to know, or is willing to tell, exactly why a decision was never made.
Lynn Cline, NASA's deputy chief for international affairs believes that the international partners would be comfortable with the five names that came from the 1993 initiative. Cline cautioned however, that she had not yet had an opportunity to address the issue with her counterparts in other countries.
Another unknown variable involves the Russians. They were not yet official ISS partners when the five names were recommended. Yuri Semenov, the head of the aerospace company Energia and a person of influence in the Russian space program, disapproves of Alpha. To him, Alpha implies "the first," which he believes is a slight to the 15-year-old Mir space station. Semenov would rather see the station named Beta or the clearly dead-on-arrival suggestion of Mir 2.
With assembly of the orbiting outpost seemingly now on track, space managers are hoping to bring stability to operational procedures by referring design and process changes to a Management Control Board. With representatives from the partner nations, at least one NASA public affairs official felt this group could entertain station name-change requests.
Jason had the Argo. Columbus had the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Cousteau had the Calypso. And now, Bill Shepherd has his Alpha. As Dan Goldin indicated, now Shep can "sleep well at night and not have any concerns."
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