Drunks in Space
I wonder if you get hungover. Does the ceiling spin? If you throw up, where does it go? How do you hold your drink? Questions, questions.
A panel reviewing astronaut health issues in the wake of the Lisa Nowak arrest has found that on at least two occasions astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so intoxicated that they posed a flight-safety risk.
The panel, also reported “heavy use of alcohol” by astronauts before launch, within the standard 12-hour “bottle to throttle” rule applied to NASA flight crew members.
Update: uh-oh.
An explosion killed two people Thursday at the airport HQ of a company building the first private manned rocket for Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s space tourism venture. Aerial video showed a wrecked flatbed trailer with a large silver tank next to it, and large pieces of debris appeared to be strewn for hundreds of yards
Better a drunk astronaut than a drunk President!