Say Pre-Launch Imbibing Does Not Represent A Problem

Seven astronauts due for launch onboard the shuttle Discovery next week will probably get a chance to pop open a beer this weekend, before blasting into weightlessness.

Recent criticism, after anonymous allegations of preflight binges by NASA astronauts, triggered a controversial report released last month. But the astronauts, as one might expect, remain unfazed.

"We're all professionals," says Scott Kelly, commander of the last space shuttle mission in August, as reported by the Associated Press.

Kelly defends his profession with a dose of common sense. "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."

Kelly (right) admits he has enjoyed a beer a day or two before liftoff, and there is no harm in it. Three days before liftoff, each shuttle crew is confined to a semi-isolation-dorm type quarters, or at a beach house with their spouses.

Kelly's co-pilot, Charles Hobaugh, says that coming into the launch, his drink of choice is skim milk... although admittedly he is not a teetotaler.

The preflight drinking was spotlighted just months after the arrest of Lisa Nowak. As ANN reported, Nowak was involved in a love triangle with her former astronaut boyfriend, and was jailed for chasing down his new girlfriend.

Nowak's case led NASA to investigate the health and habits of astronauts, which uncovered two unofficial reports of drunkenness.

Bad press has been tough on NASA's finest... especially as it has escalated into ridicule by some.

"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?"

Peggy Whitson, current commander of the international space station, is careful about her perception of drinking. "We don't want people to have an image of us as being a bunch of drunks," she said in an interview with the AP this week.

Whitson said the night before her launch aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan there were many preflight toasts.

NASA astronauts adhere to an unwritten rule -- that alcohol is forbidden 12 hours before launch, but is consumed freely at other time in crew quarters, according to a panel's findings.

Former NASA flight surgeon Dr. Jonathan Clark, who lost his wife Laurel in the 2003 Columbia tragedy, said partying before a launch was the norm.

"It really got to be kind of crazy," he said, when missions were abruptly scrubbed -- a common occurrence because of changing weather or mechanical problems. "You have this buildup of tension. You go out there and then it gets scrubbed, then you don't know when you're going to go. ... There were definitely times when people drank during that period. Duh. But I don't think it was ever an issue before a mission, like the day of or the day before."

Still, NASA's search for details came up empty, despite a look at 20 years of records. No astronauts at Cape Canaveral or on Soyuz flights from Kazakhstan were recorded as drunk or intoxicated at launch times.

Air Force Col. Richard Bachmann Jr., chairman of the independent astronaut health panel that issued the report, contends the sources of the confidential information are not being forthcoming.

The space agency hopes to have in place by year's end a code of conduct that spells out the prelaunch drinking ban... if there is any beer left.

"If there was anything that created a problem for us, frankly it was the report," said retired Air Force Col. Pamela Melroy, the commander of the upcoming mission on Discovery.

Clark believes this year's controversy offers an opportunity for NASA and the spacemen as a whole to improve their reputation.

"It's like a football team that's got a really bad record. You've got to pull yourself up and reinvent yourself and do a better job," he said. "In my estimation, it could be one of the best things that happens to NASA."

FMI: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov