NASA Fires Astronaut 323
davidwr writes "In an unprecedented move for an unprecedented situation, NASA has fired now-former astronaut Lisa Nowack. She is facing charges of attempted kidnapping related to an incident earlier this year. Ms. Nowack is a Navy officer and remains so."
Has anyone tried (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:5, Funny)
Brett
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As for the diapers. Well, that is so you can drive non stop. Duh.
See? It is all perfectly rational.
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Brett
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Hers got away.
Professionalism went away.
There's plausible evidence that it was attempted murder. Needless emotional pain, and every other kind of pain, is no excuse for her inappropriate and aggressive behavior. If she's a hero, then people are misguided. Weak excuses for revenge are the commuppance of schnooks.
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:5, Funny)
Well Duh!.
I don't know what planet you're from Sparky, but here on Earth, we call them "women" and "men"
Non-stop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell us the car that she drove that actually got 900 miles to a tank of gasoline. We want to know about it!
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Re:Has anyone tried (Score:4, Funny)
I dunno, but I'm a guy, so I just piss in an empty Snapple bottle.
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:4, Insightful)
Too much has been made of the diaper thing. To us non-astronaut types, wearing the diapers is kind of crazy, but it is a trick astronauts use when they go on space walks and such when needing to use the bathroom is inconvenient if not impossible. That part isn't crazy IMHO. The rest of it? Yah, totally wacko. I was under the impression she knew the other person though. I could have been misinformed though.
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd imagine that it takes very little in the way of strange behavior to disqualify a person for astronaut duty, regardless of what their explanation is. Even if her behavior was totally justified and not in any way her fault, the fact that she ended up behaving this way probably means she's not good astronaut material anymore. Astronauts should generally not respond to environmental or emotional stress by flipping out and committing crimes.
Navy responsible for her next assignment? (Score:2)
Define strange behaviour (Score:3, Funny)
Like wanting to be blasted into space in an outdated craft stuck on top of a giant fuel tank?
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"You know, Larry, before I went completely blitzo, drove 900 miles in diapers to kill my would-be boyfriend's love interest, I too believed that Mormons didn't buy nearly enough Elton John records."
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Even if Oefelein handled things poorly or strung her along a bit (I'm not asserting that he did this)her reaction still made her unfit to be an astronaut. She reacts unp
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:4, Insightful)
His career is probably shot at this point. They won't fire him- it would draw yet more unwanted attention to NASA, and he might make false accusations (or worse, true ones) about NASA's own failures (for instance, that NASA turned a blind eye to this kind of behavior). But NASA might issue a strong reprimand, and make it clear that they would do everything in their power to make his transition to a non-NASA career as quick and painless as possible. I doubt he will ever fly again- there would be too much negative publicity. If they ever put him on a shuttle, the mission would get more publicity from rude jokes by Leno and Letterman than any of the actual science would.
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:4, Insightful)
I think he is done too. This will bring all the attention of NASA evaluators on him. Not to mention that them both being Navy officers renders their activities in direct violation of all the various rules of professional conduct which officers must adhere to. I am quite certain that adultery is frowned upon in those.
So I would expect his/her court martials and/or dishonorable discharges to be just around the corner. It just so happens that her truly outre ways are hogging all the news at the moment. His moment in the spotlight is coming.
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I haven't personally listened to her side of the story, but I intend to just as soon as get the run down from the bum who hangs around my office building raving about aliens and mind control and such. As soon as I get that straight, I'm sure to want to hear about the benefits of driving in diapers.
Hey, doesn't the US have minimum sanity standards for officers in the armed services?
Re:Has anyone tried (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait...
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I'm just wondering about the sanity of those who voted him in the SECOND TIME AROUND.
Even if he wasn't really voted in, and the voting machines were tampered with etc, the voters are responsible for allowing such voting machines to be used.
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Problem being, psych tests only catch people too stupid or uneducated to lie their way through them. They are basically the equivalent of asking "Are you nuts?".
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This part has been explained in the very first news article on the subject. You want to wear diapers, when you can not (or don't want to) be interrupted. Apparently, astronauts wear diapers at launch/re-entry. It is a good idea, because you may spend a while strapped to a chair.
She wanted to get over 900 miles as quickly as possible — without stopping to pee — strapped to the driver seat. This part of her act is not at all cra
Yeah, I've tried, but thats not the question. (Score:5, Insightful)
has anyone tried to listen to it without laughing... thats the hard part.
What I love about this story is she gets aaa wig, everything you need to kill and torture someone, drives forever to meet her... and the weird part is diapers that isnt weird for her or her job... like none of that other stuff bothers anyone.
Clearly, we are desensitized to murder and all that... but adult diapers really gets us.
Re:Yeah, I've tried, but thats not the question. (Score:5, Insightful)
The diapers are what make it weird.
Of course the rest bothers lots of people, it just doesn't make you stop and go "huh?" like hearing she drove cross country wearing diapers does.
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You're forgetting... astronauts = military (Score:4, Informative)
This can't be done, legally, because Capt. Nowak is a military officer. (As it says in the article, the reason NASA requested her transfer back the regular Navy is because they do not have the authority to use administrative measures against military members assigned to them.
This is actually pretty common in all things military. It doesn't take conviction of anything to remove an officer or enlisted person from a special position, like a commanding officer, executive officer, command representative, or even just a normal pilot. Even just being charged with something questionable usually results in the person being relieved of that position/command until the whole issue is sorted out. If they're found innocent, they might get another chance at it sometime later...
nah (Score:4, Funny)
It's not completely unprecedented. They fired the Challenger crew. I guess they just couldn't keep it together.
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+5 Awesome (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I guess some people are still pretty broken up over the whole Challenger thing.
Re:+5 Awesome (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah, those were the days when spaceflight was really booming.
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NASA Fires Astronaut... (Score:2)
If anyone ever earned the title "Insensitive Clod" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's not insensitive, these jokes from 1986 a (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you?
I thought not.
Trust me, it changes your perspective.
Unprecedented? (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's not like it's unusual to fire someone who is incapable of doing the job you hired them to do.
Sensationalism at its "finest".
Not necessarily... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:4, Informative)
To be sure, she isn't "prior military". She is a current Navy officer formerly on assignment to NASA. As far as paperwork goes, she is just reassigned out of NASA, since the Navy is still her administrator and she hasn't been discharged (yet).
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For some reason you think her personal life is part of her job and mission.
She was fired because she was an ebbarassment to NASA management for her actions outside work, she was NOT fired for being incapable of doing her job.
Mod AC parent up! (Score:2)
sure, kidnapping is a more serious event, but the two are just as much unrelated.
That said... I'm pretty sure that NASA doesn't allow anybody with a criminal record on their astronaut staff, and so wouldn't have a choice.
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Not unrelated at all... (Score:5, Funny)
Better question: Would you let somebody with obvious mental instability babysit your $1.3 billion kid?
Re:Not unrelated at all... (Score:4, Funny)
Diapers saving time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diapers saving time? (Score:5, Funny)
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There's also the possible issue of lying in wait for her victim at the airport. It'd be terribly embarrasing to drive 900 miles in a blind rage to attack somebody, only to miss your chance due to an ill time potty break.
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Now I wouldn't stop except to refuel, except for once when it was simply too painful to keep driving. Women, in my experience, tend to need to go to the bathroom more often than once every 6 hours. Since every unecessary stop puts a severe ding in you
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Say what?! I don't take 10 minutes to lay a cable, never mind take a leak. Seriously, if your bladder was so large that you needed 10 minutes to empty it (including all the attendant activity) you could easily drive for 10 hours without having to stop. I've gone seven hours and 1.2L of water before it became a case of "Next rest stop, or a tree!", and that stop was still well below 10 minutes.
Your calculations may be being generous, to be sure, but 10 minutes is excessive.
Re:Diapers saving time? (Score:4, Funny)
"That's for damn sure." - Mrs. Cable
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In completely ideal cases -- the gas station is immediately at the end
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Re:Diapers saving time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Although we can't be sure, I would guess that it was not to avoid wasting time, and was instead to avoid getting caught on camera. You can fill up your gas tank outside, but most gas stations these days have their WCs on the inside, and most of them have CCTV to take pretty pictures of you. If she was hoping to murder and dispose of her rival, she would absolutely not want any evidence that she had made a cross country trip around the time that the victim disappeared. Of course, most gas stations these days also have cameras watching the license plates of their customers to avoid drive-offs, but I guess she was improving her chances by not going inside.
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Maybe she was a backwoods hiker and thought of the trick of pre-placed cans of gas along the highway where she could grab them later. Good lord, it's not hard to be a criminal genius.
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Re:Diapers saving time? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Diapers saving time? (Score:4, Informative)
Ask any 18-wheeler driver if they use a "piss jug"! When you are stuck in traffic, or have valuable cargo, or don't want to stop in a bad neighborhood, a plastic jug solves problems nicely.
Only on slashdot..... (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Diapers saving time? (Score:5, Funny)
Either that or the guy is hung like a coal-mine mule.
Why is this odd? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for her remaining a Navy officer, I suspect she'll get a second (please forgive the pun here) dishonorable discharge after the dust settles.
Don't leave town. (Score:2)
Re:Why is this odd? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why is this odd? (Score:5, Funny)
I believe you meant, "one loon from the Navy."
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Who's "Nowack"? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, they fired Lisa Nowak. I know this is Slashdot, and I'm not new here ... but Christ, is it that hard to do a little basic spell-checking?
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well (Score:2)
NASA's shuttle replacement? (Score:4, Funny)
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Not just any bicycles (Score:5, Funny)
Plans to retest using a hamster and sunflower seeds were scrapped after the bike was totaled in a training accident. (A NASA bicycle rider on loan from the Air Force attempted to take the bicycle over a 3 inch curb, which should have been within the 5 inch tolerance level of the suspension. Unfortunately, one of NASA's subcontractors designed for 5 cm tolerance level instead, and after the suspension exceeded tolerance it folded like only a $600 million can can.)
NASA is now submitting a proposal for a better, more expensive bicycle to continue their important scientific mission. $1 billion is slated for testing the suspension under a variety of stressful conditions, and as much as $2.50 is slated for experimental apparati for measuring the responses of the hamster.
I guess what this means... (Score:2)
Pampers, bitches. (Score:5, Funny)
She had to go. Were it the NBA, they could have just fined her, or sent her to rehab, but.....
Unprecedented? (Score:2, Funny)
A different perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine one of your friends or family member did something like she did. You can't really imagine it, right? That's what her friends and family now face, because she has done something so incredibly unbelievable.
It's a great sadness and tragedy to her family and friends, NASA, the world space program, and most of all, Lisa Nowak herself.
Let's hope she and NASA will learn from this lesson and wish that she will still have some hope for her future.
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Yeah, it's not like there are hundreds of qualified people who would love to work at NASA, waiting for their shot or anything.
Re:tossed out an airlock (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, it's more like she's a Navy pilot seconded to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for space research projects. If she's no longer suited to work on such projects, the right thing to do is to take her off those projects and return her to her regular Navy pilot duties--or such of those duties as her parent organization finds her still fit to perform. It's not like NASA tossed her out on the street.
Also, this is the first time an Astronaut has "snapped" like this. How do you know it's the training program, and not a personality quirk in the candidate? Astronauts are typically chosen from among a pool of people who have already proven their aptitude for high-stress, high-risk work. Most of the candidates eithe wash out or pass through the qualification tests. The ones that pass through almost never snap, but as manning increases, the occasional ringer is bound to slip through. The right thing to do is not to keep the ringer, but to wash them out as soon as you become aware of them.
Re:tossed out an airlock (Score:5, Informative)
NASA said it requested Nowak's detail be ended "because the agency lacks the administrative means to deal appropriately with the criminal charges pending against Nowak. Because Nowak is a naval officer on assignment to NASA, rather than a NASA civil servant, she is not subject to administrative action by NASA."
In other words, NASA's only option (other than doing nothing) is to fire her.
As for the quality of people NASA takes into their program, they're mostly products of the Navy/Army Test Pilot School. Even the engineers (like this crazy robotic arm operator) went to test pilot school.
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Today they are just another Federal bureaucracy. The goals are a) Hire Government Employees and b) CYA c) Oversee contracts. Any success is purely accidental.
Yeah, it's a darn shame. (Score:2)
How's NASA going to look if it turns out that her bizarre behavior was the result of something like a brain tumor?
Can't even imagine what her kids are going to make of it all.
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Re:RTFA (Score:2)
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Presuming she doesn't go to jail or a mental institution, you couldn't have found somewhere for her to work at NASA, given how big NASA is?
Why? I wasn't aware there were really any facts in dispute here. She's clearly totally bonkers, and being an Astronaut is not a job where being bonkers is welcome. If she were a hollywood actress on the other hand, it'd be an asset.
Especially since it's your training program that caused the breakdown in the first place, most likely?
Err.. what? I know it's fun to jus
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It is not uncommon for someone in space to go bonkers.
Tehre have been reports of little green men, on guy shut off all communication to the space station, there have been fist fights(which I would love to see footage of).
There is a book that talks about this, but I can't remember the name of it. Sorry.
You know the downside to (Score:2)
She didn't actually work for NASA, she is a naval officer.
"Especially since it's your training program that caused the breakdown in the first place, most likely?"
not likely. It was probably many other factors. Like a failing marriage.
"NASA could have taken the high road on this one, and it's pretty obvious they took the easiest-for-them road."
No, NASA has no way to deal with this situation, so the s
By any chance, is your last name Nowak? (Score:2)
I agree that they should've at least waited until she is found guilty in court, but to lambast NASA for firing an employee who exhibited this behavior is ridiculous. She went crazy and tried to kidnap a person. The responsibility for this decision is Nowak'
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-Mike