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But don”€™t worry, we have contingency plans. Lightfoot found a Chinese multibillionaire who wants to take his kids to the Space Station. We think we can price the trip in the 11 figures and find a way to strap a cargo module onto the Soyuz and get everybody home like you”€™re riding in the sidecar of a Harley.

Meanwhile, I”€™ve got an Action Agenda for you guys that might help us get to the end zone quicker.

First of all, and most important, decommission the Fabry Perot Spectrometer for Methane. Turn that sucker off. Don”€™t go near it. If anybody asks, we found no methane. We found no thawing permafrost. Because who cares? The whole thing was pissing off the pig farmers in Arkansas anyway.

Second, I want you to go out to the Aquapad, clean it up, get Oleg to blow out all the tubing, and we”€™re gonna try to convert 95 percent of crew urine into potable water.

Third, if you look in the storage module we”€™re using for the Position Sensitive Tissue Equivalent Proportional Chamber, you will find some mouse-embryo stem cells. Correct me if I”€™m wrong, Shane, you would know better, but I”€™m thinking those are edible.

If not, we”€™ve still got fruit fries, we”€™ve got some freeze-dried mouse sperm for the SpacePup experiment, we”€™ve got eight varieties of thale cress, and I”€™m told they actually eat that stuff in Laos. You already know about the live rats on board for the osteoporosis experiment. I have a request out to Research on the feasibility of breeding and culling.

But the main thing, Shane, is I want you to keep your game face on. Do it for the others. I know you can. I”€™ve seen you do it before. Remember when you were pitching for West Point and Lehigh went up 4″€“0 on Army in the Patriot League championship game? What did you do, Shane?

You concentrated and you bore down.

So, Shane, we”€™re down 4″€“0.

Actually we”€™re down 140″€“0, but numbers don”€™t matter at a time like this.

Concentrate and bear down, Shane.

You can shut down some of the operations. I wouldn”€™t waste time on the Scatterometer or the neutron stars or the supernovas or the Radiation Hardened Electronic Memory Experiment. Memory is not important right now, Shane. Radio transmissions from a billion years ago are not important right now, Shane.

Think about keeping your circadian rhythms on point. Ride everybody about the structured exercise training. I would continue to work the Robonaut and the pulsar beacons, because we could possibly sell that stuff later. But the main thing is morale, Shane.

Unfortunately, I won”€™t be here to help out because all 28 Flight Directors got axed yesterday. The thinking was that Flight Directors are not needed until we have, you know, flights.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that, too. You”€™re not a flight anymore, Shane. Yesterday Cheyenne Mountain notified us that you”€™re officially classified as space debris.

We can beat this, Shane.

Well, you can beat it, because I won”€™t be here.

Think of it as a space walk without a tether, Shane. Get some strikeouts and wait for the home team to get you some runs.

Oh, and one last thing. You need to shut down the EarthKAM. That thing is used by middle school students, Shane. We can”€™t have them seeing…well, you understand.