Broken In Brief: Former astronaut angry over NASA’s “most dangerous mission” space shuttle talk

CAPE CANAVERAL—Today famed astronaut and second man on the moon, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, launched a formal complaint over NASA’s repeated use of the phrase “most dangerous mission” to describe the efforts of the Atlantis shuttle to repair and upgrade the Hubble telescope.

“Are these people shitting me?” a distraught Aldrin was heard to yell during his demonstration outside Launch Complex 39 of the Kennedy Space Center. “They have the stones to tell me that a lens replacement is more dangerous than what I did? I went into low-Earth orbits wearing a glorified scuba suit inside a washing machine designed by honest-to-God Nazis. Hell, my goddamn cell phone has more computing power than every Apollo mission combined. Seriously, the balls on these people...”

“They even have a separate shuttle fueled up and ready to launch in case something goes wrong,” the American hero continued as he pitched rocks at the front door of the complex. “You know what the rescue plan was for Apollo 13? A fancy tombstone, that's what. Want to know want what backup procedures and safety tests we had? A monkey going around in a centrifuge. Once. Replacing a lens is dangerous? Tell that to Alan Shepard. For his first Mercury mission they tied him to a rocket with twine, gave him a belt of scotch, and told him to hold his breath.”

“Most dangerous? Someone come out here and fight me!” screamed the aeronautics pioneer and former senator as authorities attempted to talk him down from atop the fiberglass replica of Apollo 12 that sits in front of the facility. Neil Armstrong was unwilling to offer comment, as he was busy scouring the nearby Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge for "anyone else who wants to tell me I walked across a fucking sound stage and not the moon."

Spokesmen for NASA were quick to point out the marketing aspects of the phrase, as well as the need to prompt interest in space flight as enthusiasm for off-planet exploration wanes. They said they hoped to be able to speak with Aldrin, in an attempt to comprehend what it was like when NASA spoke to the highest ideals in the human spirit instead of low orbit fix-it jobs, ferrying scientists into the clutches of stranded Russians suffering from space madness, and ushering in the robot apocalypse.