NASA Evacuates Space Station, American Astronauts Gotta Move In With The Russians

I smell sitcom!

Astronauts on the International Space Station (currently out in space), have been evacuated from their area of the station to the Russian area after a possible ammonia leak triggered an alarm to Mission Control early today. Intitially, Russia, wanting us Americans to look bad no doubt, reported that there were “harmful emissions” in the Space Station but NASA has followed that up by saying there is still no hard data proving a leak or anything actually dangerous at all. Instead they think it might just be “a faulty sensor or computer relay.”

So all seems fine for now violent danger-wise, but I can ‘t help but imagine what it ‘s like now that the two American and one Italian astronauts had to move in with the three Russian astronauts. Talk about an Odd Couple. The Three ‘s (Six ‘s?) Company with an international and extra-planetary flair, living situation is just the sitcom idea I ‘ve been looking for! Here ‘s a list of episode ideas I ‘ve been workshopping to show that this baby ‘s got legs.

“Not My Babushka”
One of the American astronauts has lost her lucky headscarf and sees one of the Russian astronauts wearing it to dinner the following night. There is an altercation at the table and a lot of misunderstanding because Babushka means “Grandma” in Russian, so they literally don ‘t know what each other is talking about.

“The One With The Threesome”
One of the Russian astronauts misinterprets the popular American overuse of the word “love” and believes one of the American astronauts wants to sleep with him. The Russian sneaks into her bedroom, where she is “making whoopie” with the Italian astronaut. The Russian sees this, is confused for a moment, then shrugs and joins in. No one notices because it all happened in the dark and the episode ends with a shot of them waking up in the morning, the Russian astronaut in the middle smiling and the other two see what happened and scream!

“The Chinese Restaurant”
A shot for shot homage to the famous Seinfeld episode only without gravity and the food is all dehydrated.
Astro Jerry: “I dare you to go eat a dehydrated egg roll off a stranger ‘s table”
Astro Elaine: “Give me $500!”

“Fool Me Once ‘”
A prank war has erupted! After the Americans prank the Russians with chewing gum on their toilet seats, the Russians get them back with putting lemon juice in their drinking water. The pranks escalate in seriousness until no one trusts anyone else. Eventually the Russians report a REAL gas leak in THEIR section of the International Space Station. The Americans don ‘t budge, afraid of looking the fool, so the Russians have to complete a very complicated math problem to fix the leak just in the nick of time. The Italian astronaut will be conspicuously absent.

“Father Knows Stress”
Bob Newhart guest stars as one of the American astronaut ‘s father and he is not impressed with his son ‘s job as an astronaut. When he comes to visit the International Space Station, the rest of the astronaut gang has to band together to show the father that being an astronaut is actually a very important job.