posted on Wednesday, February 07, 2007 8:10 AM
by
Lou Michels
Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places (E.g., orbit)
I can't resist commenting on the astronaut story, if for no other reason than several of my classmates from Air Force were astronauts and I have more than a passing familiarity with what it takes to get into the program. Let’s just say it’s a little disheartening to find that even people subjected to the rigorous training and scrutiny the NASA program requires can still fall apart over a workplace romance, just like the rest of us slugs.
And the story also reveals that, for most people, there really isn’t a way to separate personal from work life when you’re carrying on a relationship with a co-worker. All the lousy things that happen in personal relationships get intensified when mixed in the cauldron of work. And then they boil over for some folks.
Whatever personal demons Mrs. Novack was facing, I guess we can be thankful that she snapped on the ground, and not when she was manipulating that robot arm in low earth orbit last summer.