Drunks... in... Spaaaace!

Been traveling for much of the summer -- sorry for the paucity of posts. Conferences, talks, vacation.

Space news has been pretty quiet lately, though today we'll hear more about allegedly drunk astronauts. The Wif: "Hell, if I were a mission specialist, damn right I'd want to slug back a few shots before playing one-in-fifty Russian roulette. They're not driving, after all."

Me: "Um, but they need to be alert, in case there's a pre-launch evacuation down the zipline to the bunker. And if you were representing your country on world TV, mebbe you'd want to be sober."


When I was 12, I realized I'd never pass the physical to be a pilot astronaut, and started aiming to be a mission specialist. Since mission specialists come from a variety of specialties (science, medicine, engineering), I picked the one that excited me most -- astrophysics. After all, it worked for Sally Ride.

Quite a few years later, NASA's done zippo with crude spaceflight, and so here I am, letting photons do the traveling for me.

(More embarrassing NASA news over at Bad Astronomy.)