Robots Don't Drink

30 July 2007



Report Says NASA Let Drunk Astronauts Fly

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration used to be the “can-do” part of the federal government. Putting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon proved that. And if further evidence were necessary, when Apollo 13 had an explosion in its oxygen tanks, everyone came home alive. But that was a long time ago. Now, a report says NASA let astronauts fly drunk on more than one occasion. It is time to reassess just what the agency exists to do.

The rights and wrongs of drinking don’t really enter into this, but one would have hoped that the hard-drinking macho test pilot behavior from “The Right Stuff” had passed into the history books. If not, and in a couple of cases it clearly hadn’t, someone on the ground should have benched the inebriated space(wo)man. Apparently, replacing a crewmember or scrubbing a launch never occurred to them.

NASA’s brief has been to do the fundamental research and engineering necessary for spaceflight and advanced aviation. This journal has long maintained that manned spaceflight at this point of development is rather pointless. Any scientific data gathering can be done at far less cost robotically. Sending humans to a space station in earth orbit might make some sense if there were any science for them to do, but a quick glance at what goes on at the International Space Station proves that there isn’t much real science involved.

The question is whether there is any real mission left for the agency, or whether it is time to end manned flights. The case for closing down the astronaut core is quite obvious. The case for keeping it now needs to be made if it can be. Professor Stephen Hawking and others maintain that eventually mankind will have to leave Earth to survive. One biosphere just isn’t enough. Does NASA have a role to play in such a move? Or is this a private sector effort?

Back when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the space race was an extension of the Cold War beyond Earth’s atmosphere. America feared Soviet control of space would result in Soviet domination of the planet. There is no more Soviet Union, and space is rapidly proving itself to be empty of promise. That what space is – empty. NASA has yet to come to grips with that fact, and like any drunk in denial, can't..

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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