This strikes me in a couple of ways. Number one...it's a deflective device to draw attention away from the very serious issue of sabotage and employee satisfaction among government contractors, which as anyone who's ever worked with or for the feds knows is a huge pain in the ass and absolutely likely to generate this kind of dangerously irrational act...like postal employees on juice...so, let's not look under that rock.

Secondly, this seems to be just another skirmish in the manic obsession for health and social hygene. Oh, it's all so rational until it becomes a force that destroys people's lives...so in an interest to keep one person's little monster-offspring from ever encountering drugs which are primarily used to feel good and are NOT created by big pharma, we have laws about 'em which cause the destruction of countless other lives as people are tossed into the obscurity of that system of legalized torture (our prison system) in order to teach us all a quickly forgotten lesson about "sin" and learn nothing about public health. So much for the freedom to pursue one's own kind of happiness.

It's obvious that no astronaut ever endangered the mission by being drunk and the media is having a field day by equating astronauts having a nip, with their own experiences where reporters can be totally blasted at the neighboring bar and still put in an appearance and actually create a product that must be the result of a intoxicated mind...which explains a lot, come to think about it, about why our media is a travesty and having extended the first ammendment to protect the rabid greed and ideological sociopaths at our major outlets and even the whitehouse's press department, is the shits.

America loves drama and a good joke now n then.

Blasting Off While Intoxicated (BOWI) Where are the cops??

Occifer(hic) dat asteroid jumped out n fronna' me.

NASA Not Absolutely Sober Americans

Zero gravity puke?? whooaaaaaaaa hahahaha Look out for that liver!!

Have fun Astro!!

It's very simple actually. Pilots need to be very aware of the imminent danger of hypoxia. There are four major types of hypoxia pilots learn about in training: hypoxic, histotoxic, hypemic and stagnant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_%28medical%29

Histotoxic hypoxia can occur from being drunk (cells are unable to effectively use the oxygen); stagnant hypoxia can occur from excessive gravitational forces (there is a local restriction in the flow of otherwise well-oxygenated blood).

So, if a pilot/astronaut were drunk and lifting off on a space shuttle the mixture of histotoxic and stagnant hypoxia would be more than enough to cause the person to pass out, and in a worst-case-scenario, die.

"I wonder how someone could get into trouble right before a launch because of the way they keep us bottled up right before a flight," one astronaut tells the Times.

"Bottled up," yeah. Wink wink. Nice code words, there, Major Tom. We getcha. More "rocket fuel" on its way.... I love this story; and with the cosmonaut sounding off on it, it's like the Daily Show come to life!

I worked at a NASA lab for 6 years during the '90s. A substantial number of civil service and contractor employees I encountered during that time could be certified as "brain dead." A drunk astronaut is still more competent and productive than most of those clowns.

the type of story you make fun of!

What's going to happen? Will the nation's youth take to their space shuttles in a drunken frenzy? Will we need to start yet another bullshit "drug awareness" program in the schools to keep them from lifting off fully tanked?

If anything, the youth will see this as an INSENTIVE to work hard, drink hard, and maybe one day become an astronaut and walk on Mars. And be the first to puke on it.

NASA may have just solved our education problem, no new funding or testing programs required. The kids have a new motivation for attaining excellence that they can really relate to.

Who wants to give up inebriation for achievement, anyway?

... and as much as I'd love to go into orbit for a few weeks, the one thing I would not want to ever experience?

Zero-G hangover. My typical G hangovers were bad enough. If my ack is gonna fly back up out of my gullet, I'd like it to be due to reverse peristalsis and not because me, my stomach, and its volatile contents are all in freefall. Call me a traditionalist.

Now if you want to talk about fishbowling the flight deck, that's another matter entirely.

There is a difference between Sharipov's suggestion of the benefits of minimal-to-moderate drinking (50mL of wine!) while not actively on-duty in a shuttle or station and being drunk while on-duty during liftoff. Especially during a dangerous period of time on a mission, it seems at best drastically irresponsible and at worst tremendously dangerous. While there are significant doubts about the validity of the drunkenness claim, it is still a considerably serious issue and making light of it seems unwise.