Sauced in Space

[Harvey Wallbanger]

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_6482813
Panel: Astronaut on the sauce went into space on the Soyuz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - After drinking heavily, an astronaut flew on a Russian spacecraft and another was cleared for flight on a space shuttle, said the chairman of an independent panel of outside experts Friday, citing unverified interviews.

The panel's report on astronaut health, released Friday, said NASA officials failed to listen to flight surgeons and other astronauts who warned of safety risks because some astronauts had too much to drink.

The news rocked the space agency anew and renewed concerns about whether NASA has fixed many of the problems that led to the demise of the space shuttle Columbia.

While the report was vague and gave no names, panel chairman Col. Richard Bachmann Jr. provided a few details. He said the panel was told about multiple instances involving alcohol, but the most detailed involved two astronauts.

In the case of the shuttle astronaut, a colleague warned he had had too much to drink but only after the mission was delayed for mechanical reasons, Bachmann said the panel was told. The astronaut had been going to fly a jet from Florida back home to Houston. Bachmann said he didn't know the outcome of that incident.

The second incident, he said, involved warnings of alcohol involving an astronaut flying on the Russians' Soyuz spacecraft headed for the International Space Station.

In such a situation, Russia would have the authority to overrule NASA if the U.S. space agency wanted to prevent the astronaut from flying.

Ellen Ochoa, an astronaut who heads flight crew operations for NASA, said drinking and toasts are common in Russia, even just seven hours before flight.

Speaking by telephone to a news conference in Washington, Bachmann said it was not the panel's mission to investigate allegations or verify them and that NASA would have to ferret out details.

"There's certainly no intent to impugn the entire astronaut corps," Bachmann said. "We don't have enough data to call it alcohol abuse. We have no way of knowing if these are the only two incidents that have ever occurred in the history of the astronaut corps or if they're the tip of a very large iceberg."

The independent panel was created by NASA to assess its health screening after the high-profile arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak in February after she drove across the country to confront a romantic rival.

The drinking allegations were a new humiliation for the space agency. Headline writers in newspapers and on the Web had as much fun as they did with the arrest of Nowak.

"Sauced in Space." "NASA: Shaken and Stirred." "Three-Martini Launch." "Houston, we have a drinking problem." The New York Post incorporated two giant bottles of Grey Goose vodka into a photo of the space shuttle.