July 27, 2007
"And I think it's gonna be a long, long time"
Posted by pete at July 27, 2007 11:22 PM"'til touchdown brings me round again to find":*
A report to be released by NASA today not only describes heavy alcohol use by astronauts prior to launch, but also says flight surgeons complained that their medical opinions on astronauts' fitness to fly were ignored by the agency's leadership.
"Several senior flight surgeons expressed their belief that their medical opinions regarding astronaut fitness for duty, flight safety and mission accomplishment were not valued by leadership other than to validate that all (medical) systems were 'go' for on-time mission completion," says the report, obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
[...]
The findings, which include the fact that "alcohol is freely used in crew quarters" and that shuttle astronauts in at least two instances were launched into space despite warnings that they posed a safety risk by being intoxicated, bring fresh embarrassment to the agency.NASA Administrator Michael Griffin formed a committee of civilian and military experts to review astronaut health care five months ago, after astronaut Lisa Nowak was arrested in Florida and charged with attempted kidnapping in her strange confrontation with her female rival for the affections of a male astronaut.
Today's report, a summary of which was first revealed Thursday by the trade publication Aviation Week & Space Technology, implies that beyond Nowak's conduct, NASA has looked the other way when it came to some astronauts' reckless behavior, especially the heavy consumption of alcohol before shuttle launches.
Sure, it all sounds pretty bad, but have you ever seen a shuttle launch? Even the ones that don't blow up are still pretty frightening.
I haven't been following the story too closely, but surely some of the folks going up on the shuttle aren't involved in actively piloting the thing. How sober does the person growing the seedlings or the schoolteacher need to be, really?
This was before there was a late break in the case, however...
The report, which is about a dozen pages long and was delivered to NASA's Washington headquarters on Thursday, does not include the names of the intoxicated astronauts, the dates of their risky behavior, nor whether they were quietly disciplined or dismissed.
My sources have revealed one of the names in question, and this new information explains a lot. Apparently one of the astronauts actually requires some form of sedation before boarding a shuttle:
Happy to clear things up.
*Wow, my third APCB entry using lyrics from "Rocket Man" for a title. Keen.
During launch, no one in the shuttle has to do anything at all. During re-entry and landing, the crew must press a button to lower the landing gear. This is not strictly necessary - the landing gear can be lowered automatically - but was included on the insistence of the astronaut corps, who wanted something to do.
Really.
this blog entry is screaming out for a redux of the William Shatner ‘interpretation’ of “Rocket Man”