Report Finds No Evidence Of Astronaut Drinking

But NASA Will Still Make Recommended Changes

NASA's safety chief said yesterday that he could find no evidence of heavy drinking by astronauts before space launches -- undermining but not dismissing reports from an independent panel on astronaut health issues that said last month that at least two such incidents had come to its attention.

"I was unable to verify any case in which an astronaut spaceflight crewmember was impaired on launch day," safety chief Bryan O'Connor wrote in the executive summary of his 34-page report. He also said he could find no cases in which a manager disregarded a recommendation by a flight surgeon or other astronaut that a drunk crew member should not fly.

Nonetheless, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin said the agency will initiate a limited drug and alcohol testing program for employees -- something he said has been required by law since 1991 but has not been implemented.

"I think if there are concerns about the integrity of our processes, then if we have such testing, we will be able to allay those concerns," he said in a news briefing after O'Connor's report was released.

The review by O'Connor, a former astronaut and shuttle accident investigator, went back 20 years and included interviews with 90 astronauts, flight surgeons and other NASA officials. The report included an e-mail signed by 20 flight surgeons saying they that had never seen any drunken behavior by astronauts before a launch or training flight.

Griffin said the agency also looked into the allegations of drinking and "couldn't find it."

"At some point, the preponderance of the evidence becomes this behavior didn't happen," he said.

Still, O'Connor's report did not rule out the possibility that such incidents occurred. In the earlier report on astronaut health, the authors wrote that "interviews with both flight surgeons and astronauts identified some episodes of heavy use of alcohol by astronauts in the immediate pre-flight period, which has led to safety concerns." Everyone who provided such accounts, however, did so on the condition of anonymity.

O'Connor said that he had requested access to the sources of those specific reports but that he had not spoken with them. NASA officials say that many of those who spoke to the initial independent panel also spoke to O'Connor.

The earlier report was commissioned to examine issues related to the emotional and physical health of the NASA crews after former astronaut Lisa M. Nowak was arrested on Feb. 5 and charged with attempting to kidnap a romantic rival. In court documents released Tuesday, Nowak's lawyers said they will argue that she was temporarily insane when she approached the other woman at the Orlando airport.

O'Connor's report looked at what he concluded were two likely incidents of drinking -- one involving a shuttle launch that was scrubbed and another the launch of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the international space station or its Soviet predecessor, Mir.

O'Connor concluded that the shuttle incident cited by Air Force Col. Richard E. Bachmann Jr., chairman of the earlier panel, probably involved a flight between 1990 and 1995. At a news conference held when the astronaut health report was released, he said that an astronaut allegedly "presented for flight for the shuttle, and then subsequently to the T-38 [training plane], in a condition that to that person did not seem to be fit for duty."

Bachmann said at the time that a fellow astronaut warned managers that the crew member seemed to be drunk. O'Connor said he "reached out to at least two of the crew members on each of these missions, and I talked to the astronaut office chiefs serving at the time. None could verify the scenario above. And to date, I have not received any anonymous information that would verify the incident."

O'Connor said he spoke with Bachmann about the alleged Soyuz incident and was told that "reportedly, the crew member was so drunk that the flight surgeon felt compelled to sit in the crew member's room overnight out of concern that he might suffer an airway obstruction. [Bachmann] did not say which night with respect to launch this happened."

O'Connor said he spoke with all "active operational flight surgeons covering all of our Soyuz missions to the international space station" and found no corroboration.

"As for disregard for flight surgeon or crew safety concerns," he continued, "I found that although there may be occasional disagreements among operations and medical team members, all parties understand their roles and authorities and the multiple safety reporting and appeal paths."

Citing the finding by the earlier panel that "alcohol is freely used in crew quarters," O'Connor wrote: "I verified that alcohol is available in the crew quarters, mostly in the form of beer and wine. I saw one half-empty bottle of tequila in one of the cupboards. The crew, being in quarantine, cannot go to town to buy these items, so in a tradition that goes back many years, support crew astronauts take preferences, stock the refrigerators, and are repaid by a pay-as-you-go honor system.

"As for use, I noted that the amount of beer and wine in the crew quarters was substantially less than what was reported in the 1980s and early 1990s. When I asked about this, I learned that the fraction of the crew members who drink alcohol has been declining over the years."

Griffin said that recommendations by O'Connor and the earlier astronaut health panel will be implemented -- including adopting an astronaut "code of conduct," adding "behavioral health" to the annual physical exam and encouraging NASA employees to report any problem behavior they see.