Since I'm not king, and can't do it by diktat, this is a plea to all of the reporters and columnists out there who are writing about NASA. Can we please have a permanent moratorium on the hed "Lost in Space"? Same thing for "The Right Stuff."

It's really, really old.

And yes, I know that the latter was the title of my guest column in NRO a couple weeks ago, but I didn't come up with it--they did. The original title was "The Right Thing."

They could use other movie titles for their headlines.

When they're talking about NASA sending a manned mission to Mars it could read "Forbidden Planet".

Or when they talk about their plans for an OSP, they could call it "Plan 9 From Outer Space".

Economist, cover issue a couple of weeks ago (about the shuttle) - fairly good articles (especially for the Economist when it comes to space matters), but they did end it with that tired cliche 'lost in space'.

A headline for NASA bureaucratic blunders:

"We Kinna Take It Anymore!"

Or one for the latest probe to be lost on Mars/in Earth orbit/on the factory floor at Lockheed:

"He's Dead, Jim"