By William M. Dowd
Somehow you just know Jay, Dave, Craig and Conan are going to have a blast with this one in their late-night TV monologues:
Some of our astronauts have been flying while drunk.
A NASA review panel created to investigate the possibility said astronauts not only showed up drunk but then were allowed to fly in that condition on at least two occasions despite colleagues raising safety concerns.
The NASA probers also say they found evidence of heavy drinking within the 12-hour pre-flight no-alcohol window.
Leno in particular delights in making jokes about airline pilots who fly after drinking. Imagine the heights to which he’ll take this new revelation.
Of course, no names have been released to go along with the findings, so that puts everyone in the program under suspicion. It all came about as a result of the highly-publicized arrest of wacko astronaut Lisa Nowak on kidnapping and assault charges involving another woman who was involved with a fellow astronaut Nowak fancied.
I think it’s reprehensible when such a noble institution as astronauting is held up to ridicule because of the actions of some dingbats in the program. Which reminds me, did you hear the one about the blonde astronaut who spent two years on a space station along with two male astronauts?
Each one was allowed to take 200 pounds of luggage with no restrictions in what they contained.
The first one took his wife along. The second one took books on learning to speak German. The blonde took along lots of cigarettes.
When they landed back on Earth two years later, the married astronaut and his wife stepped off the space shuttle with a new baby. The second astronaut stepped off and greeted the crowd with a short speech in fluent German. The blonde stepped off with a nasty look on her face and a cigarette in her hand and snarled, “Anybody got a light?”
As I said, reprehensible that we’ve stooped to such low humor.
(Posted 07/27/07)
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