Billosaur's Journal: Sad but not unexpected

I've been a NASA booster (no pun intended) since I was knee-high to a grasshopper; I watched them put men on the Moon, send up Skylab, build and launch the Shuttle, mourned the losses of so many good people in The Fire, the Challenger Incident, and the Columbia Incident. I thought my beloved space program could weather anything -- and now this, an astronaut about to be charged with attempted murder.

In the early 60's, NASA's astronauts were lionized as American heroes. As time passed, their squeaky-clean, All-American image tarnished as the stories kept swept under the rug made their way out after the success of the Moon landings. I don't think that being an astronaut has the caché it used to, and frankly the public is not interested in them as public figures anymore. That is, until this.

It doesn't surprise me though. Despite the extensive screening of the astronaut selection process, a loose cannon was bound to get in. Lisa Marie Nowak, in letting her personal peccadillo become front-page news, has done more to hurt NASA than all the exploding rockets they've had to suffer through. This whole incident, from start to finish, will drag NASA through a public-relations mire that will not wash off so easily. Rockets are dangerous -- they blow up, people die. But when someone you entrust with the safety of others and the nation's prestige blows up, the fallout is much wider. Now, people will not only question the necessity of going into space, they'll wonder just what's going on up there on their dime.

I don't know what good can come of this, but I sure hope there's a silver lining in here somewhere.