The Astronaut’s Drinking Rules

After a NASA report suggested that some astronauts may have flown while intoxicated, a furor erupted, and NASA ’s alcohol rules — or lack of them — came to light.
The rules regarding alcohol and astronauts are somewhat vague, NASA officials said Friday at a news conference. Its alcohol rules for space flight have historically been the rules it applies to the use of its aircraft, informally carried over into the realm of space flight.
With the new report, NASA announced an interim alcohol policy based on rules for the T-38 training jets that astronauts enjoy the free use of. Those rules call for no alcohol consumption within 12 hours of a flight, and “astronauts will neither be under the influence nor the effects of alcohol at the time of launch.” NASA officials said at the news conference that during the quarantine period of about a week before a flight, alcoholic beverages were available at crew quarters.
They also said that the schedule the day before a launch was very busy, and that the astronauts were in close contact with medical personnel, so that it was hard to understand how such incidents could occur unnoticed. There’s no indication in the new report as to when the alleged incidents occurred: In the last couple of years, in the changed safety climate after the Columbia accident? Before Columbia? Before Challenger? So it’s impossible to know the severity of the problem.
There’s a long tradition of two-fisted hard living among military pilots. Tom Wolfe wrote in “The Right Stuff” about Chuck Yeager having a few drinks at the Muroc hangout, Pancho’s, two nights before breaking the sound barrier and going riding horses with his wife and having an accident that broke two ribs.