e pur si muove

Even astronauts, top of their class in military academies, have their unbelievably sordid moments. The buzz in the lab this morning was all about Marie Nowak, astronaut extraordinare who confronted another woman astronaut whom she perceived as being involved in a love triangle involving another (male) NASA astronaut, their mutual paramour.

One of the bizarre details which the press has pounced on was that when Nowak found out the other woman was going to Orlando, she decided to confront her there. She therefore jumped into her car in Houston and drove all the way to Orlando and confronted her at the airport parking lot. That’s kinda extreme (it’s a 900-mile drive), but the bizarre part was her “wearing diapers in the car so she wouldn’t have to stop to go to the bathroom”, according to authorities.

It’s not as odd as it may seem initially - astronauts wear diapers during parts of missions where they can’t afford to take bathroom breaks - but seriously, was she planning to drive on just one tank of gas?
More sordid details from the Detroit Free Press.

Her booking photo, which you can see on the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of this “important breaking story”, is really quite beyond words. As is this following quote from the same article:

Nowak, of Houston, is expected to return to the Houston area, fitted with a Global Positioning System device that will help court officials monitor her whereabouts pending her trial.

The first thing that came to my mind was that it’s probably a good thing she was taken off active space duty too, otherwise she might just leave on a jet place space shuttle, won’t know when she’ll be back again.

As seen on Presentation Zen.