Friday, July 27, 2007

great. i just get over my fear of meteors and now i have to worry about about a drunk astronaut plowing into me with a space shuttle.

From CNN.com:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so drunk they posed a flight-safety risk on at least two occasions, an aviation weekly reported Thursday.

An independent panel reportedly found that flight surgeons allowed intoxicated astronauts to fly on space shuttle.

It cited a special panel studying astronaut health, which found "heavy use of alcohol" before launch that was within the standard 12-hour "bottle-to-throttle" rule, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology.

5 comments:

Ang said...

"Bottle to throttle?" Holy crap, this is big enough an issue to have a rule - with a nickname? I don't blame you, I'm scared too.

Gwen said...

This totally freaked me out when I heard it yesterday. Why would you want to be drunk while flying into space? Maybe to help blot out the memory of the Challenger? Although I guess I ought to be more worried about drunk airplane pilots, risk-wise.

Ang said...

Compared to drunk automobile drivers, though, not so much.

Brock#20 said...

Some of the astronauts are basically passengers for the ride, the mission specialists, etc.

It would be like being drunk in the back seat of a car, though one that's powered by the world's largest firework.

Come to think of it, I would want to be loaded to block out that thought.

sal said...

I think I rather deal with the off chance of the space shuttle plowing into me, than the real chance of my high/drunk DC metro driver plowing into the train ahead! ;-)