Lombard man goes for a little walk -- in space

Lombard native and current astronaut Dan Tani egged on conspiracy theorists Sunday morning when he strolled out of the international space station.

Never the one to miss out on the chance for humor, Tani said the "model" station looked great.

It was a jovial nod to those naysayers who say the first moon walk never really happened and was actually set up on a sound stage.

Tani and the other astronauts went up in the space shuttle Discovery to deliver a bus-sized module named Harmony, which was attached to the station on Friday.

As Tani and his partner on Sunday's spacewalk, Scott Parazynski, floated out of the airlock just before 5 a.m. Sunday, Parazynski asked Tani -- who came out feet first -- what he thought.

"Is it good to be back, dude?"

"Man, it's good to be back in space," Tani said. "I tell ya, they did a good job on this space station model."

"Well, the real thing's going to look just like this," Parazynski countered.

The men then headed off on a six hour and 33 minute mission to help relocate a solar panel and attach external hardware to the Harmony model. Tani, a 1979 Glenbard East High School graduate, will not return to Earth with the space shuttle Discovery crew but will remain on the space station until mid-December.

He ended his jaunt with a little excitement, too, as his walk concluded right over Illinois. As the pair was getting ready to reenter the airlock, Tani quickly and enthusiastically interrupted mission controllers from Houston.

"Break, break for just one, 30 seconds I'm looking at my home town," Tani said. He clearly hadn't noticed that until the very last minute.

"Really?" Parazynski asked.

"Yeah, let me see if I can find Lom-bard," Tani said.

"Look at that," Parazynski said, catching the excitement. "Wow."

"That's an awesome view," Tani continued.

The controllers then switched the picture over from the station to Tani's on-helmet camera so everyone else could share his elevated view of the Windy City.

"That is fantastic. I see O'Hare Airport so I can make out my hometown Lombard," Tani described.

"Too bad about those Cubbies, though," Parazynski ribbed.

"Yeah, well there's always next century," Tani countered.

The Cubs' lack-of-a-pennant pain, it seems, stretches even farther across the galaxy than fans knew.