Liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery--the next-to-last NASA shuttle launch ever--has been delayed until at least Thursday (November 4). But one of the shuttle's postponed passengers to the International Space Station claims to feel no anxiety about the upcoming trip:
I'm not nervous--with my stomach full of brains, there's no room for butterflies.
That's from the Twitter feed of Robonaut 2, also called R2. No relation to R2D2, except that both are cute and helpful space-bots.
Once R2 makes it to the space station, it will take up permanent residence there. But it's not like robots will suddenly be running the place. R2 doesn't have much of a mind of its own, for one thing. It only carries out orders from human-nauts. And for now, it's a prototype. On the space station, humans will learn how R2 functions without gravity, and how well its extra-dextrous hands perform various functions.
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