3195: International Station

International Station

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Title text: Welcome to the International Space Station Exclamation Point!

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Explanation

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This is one of 60 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a BOT APOSTROPHE S SPACE TRANSLATION SPACE ERROR PERIOD. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic plays on different meanings of the word 'space': firstly as the invisible character between words, and secondly as in the void between astronomical bodies. In this case, it is claimed that the word 'space' was never meant to be part of the name of the International Space Station, but was included as a word due to a transcription error.

The presumption is therefore that someone thought it necessary to say the name as "International [space] Station," perhaps to quash any misconception that the intended name might be "InternationalStation" (however capitalised). Someone else would have written this down as "International Space Station". The resulting accidental name was then accepted, due to it being apt or inconvenient to change.

The title text furthers the joke by transcribing the exclamation mark at the end of the phrase. (This is similar to 3143: Question Mark); there were also multiple examples of strings with punctuation (literal and otherwise) and spelling easy to misconvey in 1963: Namespace Land Rush, though none of them used either spaces or "space"s.) The word 'point' can sometimes be used to refer to a specific location within a wider space, such as a muster point. The "International Space Station Exclamation Point", then, may sound like it refers to a named location in the International Space Station (the "Exclamation Point") that is specifically intended for making exclamations (such as the one in the title text).

Similar problems to these can occur when customers order signboards. They sometimes come with unintended quotation marks, because the customer writes the signage text with quotation marks, with the expectation that the signmaker will ignore them. Or they may give the order verbally, resulting in similar problems as seen in the comic, or even more comprehensive failures.

The ISS made the news on 15 January 2026, the day prior to the release of this comic, due to the early return of some crewmembers to Earth for medical reasons.

While the ISS had other names during its design, such as Space Station Freedom or Alpha, it does not appear that NASA or Roscosmos literally originally referred to it as just International Station. The Russian name for it is "Международная Kосмическая Cтанция" (MKC) or "Mezhdunaródnaya Kosmícheskaya Stántsiya", which translates as "International Space Station" using the cosmic, non-punctuation meaning of "space".

Transcript

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This is one of 37 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Ponytail is talking to Cueball. They seem to be floating in a weightless environment, surrounded by a wrench, a book, two sheets of paper and some debris.]

Ponytail: You know, NASA and Roscosmos actually originally named it the International Station, but a translation issue led someone to accidentally transcribe the formatting.

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Discussion

Sometimes I wonder if some of these comics aren't just for the sake of seeing whatever explain xkcd users come up with 2A01:CB19:FAB:3100:D027:1047:976:8EE2 22:25, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Holy refresh pull exclamation mark! tilde tilde tilde tilde --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse 14:55, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Should the "not-earth" "space" be changed to something like "the void between astronomical bodies"? I'm not sure if, say, the surface of the Moon or Mars or Eminiar VII count as being "in space". BunsenH (talk) 15:27, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

I think "space" gets used pretty frequently for "not-Earth". Consider that NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and launches probes to other astronomical bodies. People talk about the Moon landing as being part of the "space program". "Spacemen from Mars" is a reasonably common phrase. 163.116.254.45 19:38, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Try getting to (or from) the Moon (or Mars) without using using space at all. I challenge you. (If you can do it, there's probably a Nobel Prize in it for you. Or just a life of far more mundane wealth-accumulation. Possibly in an entirely undetectable but criminal sense.) 92.23.11.33 20:11, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Let us not forget the verb form of "space" but I am unsure how to work it in here! Elizium23 (talk) 23:16, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

I believe that you intended to write {{wiktionary|space#Verb|the verb form of "space"}}, as in 'the verb form of "space"', for a start. 92.23.11.33 00:24, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I initially interpreted the cartoon as showing the people and objects floating within something gloopy, and the wrench as a bone, and that the joke was about an "internal space station". Here we are, inside a gelatinous cube, or possibly a gigantic space amoeba... BunsenH (talk) 15:43, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

New Category: Weightless There are a few strips that take place demonstrating micro-gravity, right? Is that worthy of a category? The 'space' tag could be used for comics about space or comics in space (or, I guess, comics on planets?). 191.101.157.82 17:08, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

I think the ISS was originally called start quote Alpha end quote period tilde tilde tilde tilde 134.173.108.120 18:23, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm early! 2603:7083:8700:E02:FE51:837E:B6F:327 18:24, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

It took me a moment to get it, but when I did this xkcd made me capitals LOL which doesn't happen often 2401:D005:D402:7A00:7FE1:F042:B839:91B8 21:23, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

You forgot tilde tilde tilde tilde tilde tilde tilde tilde --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse 21:31, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

At least it's not the International Ampersand En Bee Ess Pee Semicolon Station ellipsis tilde tilde tilde tilde 174.142.148.226 21:42, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Speaking of Ampersand Aa Em Pee Semicolon, that's a real life example of this effect actually happening. It was at the end of the alphabet where they would say "X, Y, Z, and, per sé, 'and'". Tilde tilde tilde tilde. Not sure if that is relevant enough to the comic though. Tharkon (talk) 02:26, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Dear Bot, don't get this Irishperson started on apostrophes. 205.175.118.102 22:57, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

From John Littlewood's "A Mathematician's Miscellany": A minute I wrote (about 1917) for the Ballistic Office ended with the sentence 'Thus a should be made as small as possible'. This did not appear in the printed minute. But P. J. Grigg said, 'what is that?' A speck in a blank space at the end proved to be the tiniest a I have ever seen (the printers must have scoured London for it).Lord Pishky (talk) 03:59, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

International Space Space Space Station? Inexplicable (talk) 07:17, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

International Space Space Space Space Space Space Space Station? Logalex8369 (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

These comments make me want to see if you could have "tildetildetildetilde"(the actual characters) as your account name. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 02:18, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Nope, typing ~~~~ gives an invalid username error. 2A04:4E41:6405:35F:0:0:EB9C:B35F 05:49, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

This one reminds me of 3143 a bit too much. Explainyourself (talk) 03:45, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Am I the only one that interpreted it as "originally it was not supposed to be a space station but rather a 'regular' (ie. terrestrial) station, but because of a transcribing mistake they put it in space, hence the random floating stuff" -- Baruch (talk) 10:04, 19 January 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That is a good insight! I think the wording is open to this kind of interpretation. (Interestingly, the "random floating stuff" does not include a sketch of the station interior itself, or any structure, per se.) Elizium23 (talk) 18:50, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

The main page has been vandalized with a floating picture of Osama Bin Laden. 65.35.147.191 (talk) 15:39, 19 January 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I just dealt with that. If I have to deal with it again, then I will. 82.132.244.8 16:01, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, the headlines regarding ISS crew issues began on 8 January, not 15 January. Elizium23 (talk) 00:39, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, "SEAOFBLUE" or whatever the editor objects to is a red herring. The main point is the early return. The medical issue is the stated reason for that return, but the Wikipedia entry describes the return, and definitely does not provide any medical details. Nobody has. The main point is the early return process. Elizium23 (talk) 00:42, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Whatever. Just doesn't need twenty words (no, I didn't count them) in the link to the external resource about it. 92.23.11.33 00:50, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

And, note, the comic with the ISS-related joke did not come out on Friday 9th, Monday 12th or Wednesday 14th, also. Leaving it more dissassociated from the 8/Jan/2026 announcement than the actual 15/Jan/2026 return. I can't say how long the idea had been stewing in Randall's head, before publishing, but he's usually quicker than a week to respond to obviously topical events. So if that's what he's done, I think we're on shakier ground trying to link it to the initial news item than its possible inspiration being the successful one. If one needs the connection.

That's entirely leaving aside from the possibility that he deliberately waited until they were all safely back on Earth (and the emergency, whatever its nature, hadn't worsened) before doing something too funny, just in case it went sour. But then the link to the return is even more definite. 92.23.11.33 01:00, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

We could still be thorough and say the news cycle was 8–15 January. And where is it written that wikilinks should not have all the words in them? Why is 4 words better than 9? Why is "to Earth" dangling outside of the phrase? There isn't even any punctuation or a... grammatical reason to chop it up this way. Where is it written? Where did we arrive at consensus? Why argue with IPv4 that only has 4 days of contribs? Elizium23 (talk) 03:39, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

As an IPv4 myself (and proud of it... and also IPv6s leave far less room in the explanation if I ever want to explain why I revert something they do, unless I snip the default reversion info down - which I might as well do, TBH), please don't make the mistake of thinking only 4 days of any given address is only 4 days of presence here. These things are dynamic (what's more, only fairly recently have they not been the Cloudflare gateway IPs that bunched contributors up into a different set of dynamic IP groups), and theoretically there are 2³² potential IP addresses that we could bounce around (ok, so remove the RFC 1918 subnet masks and some other technically unlikely parts of the range, like multicast... see 195: Map of the Internet for an idea of the possible proportion of 0.0.0.0/0 that might be end-IPs).

For links, yes be economical. I hate so much text being put into a link that the effective context of what that link is cannot be easily determined by eye, and which leaves large bits of blue (with or without underline, depending upon additional CSS/etc) initially, then typically that purplish shade (again with or without underline) if I find that I've visited it, so that I'm forced to hover over the link to get more idea of what I'm clicking upon. If you can't be usefully focussed with what text the link is tied to, you've probably not even made sure the link is the most apt one possible.

And try to hit the middle-ground. Don't just link to 'here', nor go beyond more than the basic necessary number of words when the possibly Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness of the target page title is not something you're deliberately quoting. This is basic online-etiquette, people, which was already something that pre-HTML hyperlinking systems encouraged even before Web 1.0 came on the scene. 82.132.239.241 04:57, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

De gustibus non est disputandum Elizium23 (talk) 07:56, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I would say, if we are speculating about what went on in Randall's mind, that no matter how long it was "in the can", that publishing this comic at that time would be contingent on the safe return of the crew. Elizium23 (talk) 03:48, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

The Hubble Telescope suffered from the same transcription issue - and we don't have Roscosmos to blame for that. --2A09:BAC2:637A:1250:0:0:1D3:76 01:14, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I think it is high time that I make a pilgrimage to the "Vatican Space Observatory" on "Mount Space Graham", and discuss their "transcription errors", as well. Elizium23 (talk) 03:45, 20 January 2026 (UTC)
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