What, you're telling me Mark Hamill was booked?

Let's face it, NASA needs some good P.R. -- between the astronauts wearing diapers and plotting murders and the ones getting toasted on flight days ("Drink up, dude, we're going to the frickin' moon!"), it seems we've forgotten what NASA is all about: spending billions of taxpayer dollars to take blurry pictures of, I don't know, nebulas.

So, what to do? I can see only two reasonable options:

1. Undertake an important, dramatic space mission that pushes the boundaries of known science and expands our knowledge of the universe; or,
2. Cheesy "Star Wars" tie-in.

And it probably won't surprise you to hear which one they've chosen. (Hint: Not No. 1.) Apparently, the space shuttle Discovery will take Luke Skywalker's actual (fake, plastic) lightsaber on its next mission to the International Space Station. And not only that: Chewbacca himself will hand the lightsaber over to Space Center officials. Which, of course, is ridiculous. Everybody knows that Wookiees don't use lightsabers.

All I can say is, I'm sure this will do wonders for NASA's tarnished image. Just like Major League Baseball's floundering reputation was saved by this.