Word: nasa
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Give the folks at NASA this much - they know how to close ranks. Astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak was arrested this week and charged with attempted murder after driving 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, Fla., allegedly carrying a knife, a BB gun, pepper spray, latex gloves and rubber tubing-wearing a diaper all the while so she wouldn't have to stop en route-and assaulting a romantic rival in a parking lot. After all that, NASA spokesman James Hartsfield assured the press: "Her status as an astronaut is currently unchanged." If crazy doesn't get you bumped from...
...tale that doesn't require much telling-not that it won't be told and told and told again by cable, tabs and blogs. The truly meaningful question is why that unraveling happened at all. Annapolis grads and shuttle jocks aren't supposed to come unglued. And NASA, a brutally Darwinian place that has been screening astronauts for almost 50 years, is not supposed to let loose screws through. Is NASA not as good at this as we thought? Are astronauts more destructible souls than they seem? And what does all this say about the weight-bearing ability...
...world that contemporary astronauts inhabit. The first astronauts were a disciplined bunch, but they were also test pilots. That meant that-with the exception of the well-mannered John Glenn-they spent their time enjoying the good whiskey, fast cars and plentiful women befitting their celebrity status. Back then NASA called these things high jinks and looked the other way. "The country needed heroes, so a myth was created," says Burrows. "NASA didn't go public with these matters...
...unkempt, gray-bearded man might pass for any other homeless inhabitant of Lafayette Square Park, across from the White House. But the leaflets he passes out say otherwise: CHARLES HYDER, PH.D AND FASTING. Hyder, 56, an astrophysicist and former NASA researcher, says he will starve himself to death to dramatize his call for dismantling all nuclear warheads by the year 2000. Once 310 Ibs., Hyder has lost a third of that weight after more than 70 days on salt and water. If the Government does not meet his demands, he insists, "I'll die. I know what moves the system...
...Some of the robots exist simply to amuse. Montreal's WowWee Ltd., for example, used technology that trickled down from the military and NASA to create Robosapien, a cartoonish humanoid with cutting-edge capabilities. Standing around 61 cm tall, he can perform 80 functions, including disco dancing, kicking and kung...