Astro-Nuts!

A NASA astronaut has gone completely crackers. Lisa Marie Nowak went skyward at taxpayer expense last July as a mission specialist aboard Discovery. Yesterday she allegedly decided to stalk and assault another (lady) astronaut over the affections of yet a third (mister) astronaut. This has all of the markings of another simmering legal system drama to occupy the news networks during the slow days.

Now, In any other circumstances you would assume this person - who (allegedly) drove all night to assail her rival, using diapers so she wouldn't have to stop - was probably bonkers already. Friends must have seen the signs - maybe had "a thing" about the way her laundry was folded, or she received instructions from her schnauzer, or she parked the shuttle sideways and filled the dashboard with plushy toy animals.

But Lisa Nowak is a United States astronaut. Her resume appears to be very impressive. She was a test pilot and held advanced degrees. No reasonable person would make the case that she's in the program for any other reason than merit. And NASA certainly doesn't let people be astronauts if they have a noticeably big helping of crazy on their mental dinner plate. While the tests may have changed from the Right Stuff days - when men engaged in hand to hand combat with gorillas while spinning around in a centrifuge and simultaneously doing linear algebra problems - presumably there are still some grueling standards in place to make sure people aren't shreiking maniacs.

Nowak either slipped though this process, or she cracked. The edifice of psychological health might be much more precarious than we admit. Certain trigger event (as simple as an infection, some have theorized) can to throw the mind towards imbalance.

Or maybe it's nothing so grandiose - and she just wasn't going to let that bitch get away with her man.

Tags: Lisa Marie Nowak, NASA, Astronaut