According to Aviation Week, the panel found that on at least two occasions astronauts flew after doctors and fellow astronauts had warned that they were intoxicated and posed a flight-safety risk.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6918801.stm

   I wana be an astrona, an sstro , S**t, a space man Hic !

If it's not OK to get drunk before you strap your rear to a rocket that has at least once blown up on takeoff & is on auto-pilot anyway .When is it ?

  Tdawnaz, you are right on the money with the blonde comment ,
 BBC reporter Kate Adie

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/07_10_02/monday/info1.shtml

  she has been shot 3 times and executed once ( the bullet hit her collar bone and bounced off )
one hell of a brave person, imho , and I just finished reading her book "the kindness of strangers " :smitten:if you check ot the link  have a listen to the the audio ,  womans hour on BBC radio , 1/2 the guys in the UK listen to that ,
BTW we like our UK news fast and without comercial breaks in the UK ,just the facts , and without the low grade wittering "expert " droning on and on , the last joker said there is no way that BSE can be transmited to humans from cows , ......

It was mr gummer , now Lord Gummer  , he was our minister of agriculture at the time , he got his young daughter  to eat a suspect burger live on TV to prove his point    ,
Yeah that was way back , but not forgoten in the UK
and about the same time our then UK TV expert said the black smoke from diesel engines  was perfectly harmless , ,
so  :flipa:to the "experts " from me , and most of the thinking UK cits .
BTW, BSE was bound to happen in the UK , against medical research advice the UK Gov lowered the SOP for sterilization of animal feed stocks to give greater profit to the farmers , yeah I was there when it happened but working on  legionella from cooling towers ,
lol I am going on a rant again , 

yeah, and I bet his daughter hasn't forgiven him either, he was trying to save his job at the time  , you raised a good point there Tdawnaz , we missed that in the UK ,we naturaly assumed the landed gentry didn't eat burgers anyway
 

 Hell, as far as being on the space shuttle wasted, does this surprise anyone?  At all?

As for me , I don't believe a word of it , at all!  Those people are some of the most fit on the planet!

And as for the heat shield panels falling off, you gotta be kidding , those astronauts most likely have never laid there hands on them let alone had anything to do w/ making them , or installing them gheeze!

 Now I know zip about putting a rocket into space , but I would be amazed , that if in the year 2007 , that one of these "astronauts" , had to do anything other than look at some S#!t, and what it's doin. The whole damn thing is a controlled automatically by programs ,  if one of those people in the cabin of that spacecraft touched anything that had to do w/ controlling it, not only would the system override them, but if it didn't , hell, the bloody thing would come crashin to the ground and fast .

Just my thoughts.

Nasa said however that it was taking the report's findings very seriously and would be launching an internal safety review.

It also proposed that astronauts should draw up their own "code of conduct".

"Ok Mike lets limit it to only 5 pints before the touch paper burns through
yah cant beat a good beer buzz on lift off "

 I can relate, on Saturday morning, if I had a rough week (every week) lol " high A stress" (or delt w/ too many A-holes ) I down a couple o' jiggers of ol' grandad 101 , and a raw hot onion. This replaces the brain cells that I lost from dealing w/ grown people w/ an IQ level of a 3 year old during my workweek.

 So I suppose I can understand.
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besides...it did come crashin to the ground twice...so maybe that's what happened...one of the guys wuz drunk and thought he wuz piloting a 747 :Smile: ~ Tdawn

    Thats quite possible, or maybe it was flight control 

  C,mon poopsie, I was just harassin ya anyway, have a drink , on me eh?    Here, I see Ca3le gave you a pistol , when are ya gonna whip me w/ it?