- UPDATE NOTE: To read a post about Lisa Nowak's firing by NASA, and to read "Crash-and-Burn: The Lisa Nowak Story" a treatment for a TV film, please CLICK HERE. Posted March 7, 2007.
The story of astronaut-gone-wild Lisa Nowak and her star-crossed romance may be even better than the Runaway Bride saga of a few years ago. In terms of hatching a bad plan and then executing it incompetently, it certainly takes the prize.
Talk about the wrong stuff. Wigs, trench coats, pepper spray, rubber hose, latex gloves, large garbage bags, air cartridge BB gun, steel mallet, four-inch folding knife and diapers. Sounds like she was getting ready to conduct an interrogation worthy of Jack Bauer!
So now this woman who fell to Earth won't be making any giant leaps for mankind or anyone else since she gets to wear a GPS ankle bracelet to keep her from stalking anyone while she's out on bail. That's the spirit. Use satellite technology to keep her in line. The Space Shuttle program just keeps paying dividends!
If there was ever any doubt that love can drive someone nuts, this case would have to be it. Just last July this woman (psychonaut?) was orbiting the Earth on the ride of a lifetime. Now she's going to end up divorced, without the man she loved, disgraced in front of her kids, booted out of NASA, and she'll probably have to plead her case and spend a couple years in jail. Houston, we definitely have a problem...
I write for a living, but if I'd pitched this as fiction, I think most people would have said I'd gone too far. It's probably a moot point anyway. A few years ago it would have been a slam-dunk TV movie but the Big 4 networks have all pretty much gotten out of that business. Maybe cable...
Here's something else to think about, though. If a seemingly rational person like Nowak can fall so far so fast here on Earth, what would be the consequence of a similar crack-up on a long-term space mission, say, to Mars? Something for NASA to think about...
