FROM LI-LO TO LOST IN SPACE. Geez, is nothing sacred? Apparently not, reports the AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – At least twice, astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so drunk they posed a flight-safety risk, an aviation weekly reported Thursday, citing a special panel studying astronaut health.

The independent panel also found “heavy use of alcohol” before launch that was within the standard 12-hour “bottle-to-throttle” rule, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology, which reported the finding on its Web site…

The panel was created following the arrest in February of former space shuttle flier Lisa Nowak, who was implicated in a love triangle.

In the astronauts’ defense, I should say that the prospect of being violently propelled off the planet on a rocket might cause a reasonable person to want a drink beforehand, and it’s not like there have ever been any Space Shuttle fender benders.*

*Those space disasters have occured have been due to mechanical and administrative, rather than drink-induced, failures.

–Garance Franke-Ruta

Garance Franke-Ruta is a former senior editor at the Prospect. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She was a 2006 recipient of a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.