Friday, October 19, 2007
Astronauts acknowledge they drink in the days before a launch.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — This weekend as the seven astronauts relax before Tuesday’s blastoff into space, the beer will be cold and waiting at crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center.
No one will monitor how much they drink, no breath tests given.
“We’re all professionals,” says Scott Kelly, commander of the last space shuttle mission in August.
Though the outside world was aghast at a medical report a few months ago suggesting two cases of drunkenness just before launch, the men and women who fly NASA’s space shuttles are indignant.
“It’s just such an absurd thing to think that someone would even do that,” said Kelly, a Navy commander. “I don’t have the words to describe how ridiculous this whole thing is.”
He and others agree there’s no harm in having a beer a day or two out, and he did just that. During the three days before liftoff, the shuttle crew is in semi-isolation at dorm-style quarters or at the beach house where astronauts enjoy barbecues with their spouses.
Kelly’s co-pilot, Charles Hobaugh, a burly Marine colonel, readily admits he’s no teetotaler. But he says that coming into launch, his drink of choice is skim milk.
Their mission came just over a week after the controversial report by a special medical panel that mentioned inebriated astronauts, citing interviews with unnamed sources.
What made the anonymous allegations of heavy preflight drinking even worse is that they followed by just months the arrest of Lisa Nowak. The lovelorn astronaut chased her former astronaut-boyfriend’s new love interest halfway across the country and ended up in jail. She intends to plead temporary insanity.
It was her case that led NASA to commission a panel of aerospace medical experts to look into the health of astronauts. Their report in late July mentioned the two unverified episodes of drunkenness.
It’s been tough on NASA’s 91 astronauts, unaccustomed to bad press, let alone ridicule.
“Of course, there are jokes,” said Army Col. Douglas Wheelock, a member of the new crew that will be flying Discovery on Tuesday. His family in the Northeast has called him wanting to know, “What’s going on down there?”
He said the back-to-back scandals have reminded him “that people are looking up to me, not because of who I am, but because of the suit that I have on.”
Peggy Whitson, who recently arrived on the international space station as commander, also has found herself treading carefully.
The drinking issue weighed heavily on her mind before her Oct. 10 launch aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where preflight toasting is the norm. She said it was “interesting” navigating between the U.S. and Russian cultural differences.