Years ago, J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 reported that NASA had shown keen interest in using the show's Starfury design as a forklift for work in zero-g. I think he told them it was a great idea but to please keep the name Starfury.
Did the plans for the Starfury forklift die out? Is it still a long term viable option?
It seems a neat idea to me, since a design could either be robotic or manned.
According to J. Michael Straczynski himself, when asked about it in an interview for Republibot 3.0's blog in May 2009:
I haven't heard anything new about this in several years, so I have to assume it's dormant for now.
One thing to consider here is that NASA shows interest for many things. I've recently watched ISS On-Orbit updates where current ISS crew were interviewed by some lively bunch of space exploration fans, and one question was asking them what they thought of Gravity (the movie). They were courteous, of course, but it was interesting how they masterfully avoided actually answering it. If you get my meaning. ;)
