Cape Canaveral, Florida - (Ass Mess): The astronut who was Christa McAuliffe's back-up twenty years ago in the tragic Challenger space shuttle disaster has said she is thrilled to be going up in Wednesday night's launch of the Endeavour "and sure as hell hopes Richard Branson's Virgin Intergalactic ain't in charge of the lift-off".
Teacher-turned-astronut Barbara Morgan said she had seen footage of the Mojave Dessert Branson disaster when a test launch of his pioneering revolutionary rocket bombed and caused untold carnage including three fatalities.
Morgan, 55, will be going up in the NASA shuttle despite her age, sex and ground control's worries about women's stability following this year's outbreak of female fisticuffs involving Captain Lisa Nowak and Collen Shipman, veterans of shenanigans involving the International Space Station.
Morgan has been seated aboard the Endeavour "on the lower deck in the middle, the same spot where McAuliffe sat 21 years ago" according to a NASA statement.
Why? This has not been made clear.
Internet spread-betting index Aintogottaprayer.com have quoted odds of 66 million to one against a repeat performance of the 1986 Challenger disaster.
The Endeavour's seven-member crew will spend two weeks on the International Space Station on a mission to fix NASA's tattered reputation for hiring wackos who copulate wildly in zero-gravity conditions to see if weightlessness gives you a better kind of orgasm.
A NASA statement said today the crew "will attach a new truss segment to the space station" along with fur-lined handcuffs, rubber matting, vibrators, a selection of S&M accoutrements and a gyroscope that helps control the station's orientation.
Capt Lisa Nowak is still in custody pending psychiatric reports.
