Ok, first off, late last night just before bed I read that an explosion occurred at the Mojave aerospace site of Scaled Composites LLC (makers of the SpaceShipOne that won the Ansari X-Prize), killing two [edit: a third died today] and injuring four others. My heart sank as I read this news. I am a big fan and proponent of private space flight, and I am saddened by the death of these two [now three] contributors and the hurt to the others. I hope this does not set back Scaled Composite's efforts too much, though.
I was also very disappointed with MSNBC (as I so often am) to see that the report was buried by this morning, replaced by the news that NASA has admitted to letting astronauts fly after they'd been drinking. From the article:
"The report said NASA was not equipped to deal adequately with episodes of flying after drinking. 'The medical certification of astronauts for flight duty is not structured to detect such episodes, nor is any medical surveillance program by itself likely to detect them or change the pattern of alcohol use,' it said."
....ummm, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest: maybe it should. Hello. A little pre-flight breathalizer could solve this problem.
To top that off, NASA also admitted there had been at least one case of hardware sabotage of a part destined for the International Space Station by a contractor that it refused to name.
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