Last night, just before 11 PM, I walked out of my parents’ back door and looked off to the northwest. It was a clear night, but living as close to a good-sized city as my parents and I do, I couldn’t see many stars because of all the light pollution. Orion and the Big Dipper always stand out, and a handful of other constellations whose names I don’t remember, but the sky over Salt Lake generally looks pretty empty, so I was dubious that I’d be able to see the International Space Station, as the TV weather guy had been breathlessly promising for several days. And really, I wasn’t sure why I was bothering.

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In the emerging field of private space tourism, Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic venture tend to get all the attention, but there are other entrepeneurs out there who’ve decided it’s time to find a way to get human beings off this rock, if only for a few minutes.

One of those is Jim Benson, whose Benson Space Company has been working on a space ship modelled after NASA’s HL-20 “lifting body” concept.

Today, however, I’m reading that BSC is abandoning its lifting-body work and will instead base its Dream Chaser sub-orbital spacecraft on a melding of several other vehicles with impressive track records — the X-2 and X-15 experimental planes, and the venerable T-38 trainer. And it’ll look something like this:

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Here’s a cool little item that I was planning to include in my recent round-up of space news, but somehow missed; it’s a promotional trailer (ostensibly put out by NASA) hyping the planned return of human beings to the Moon:

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I’ve come across lots of interesting space-related items in the past few weeks (er, months), but I’ve been too busy or too preoccupied with other matters to mention any of them here, so I think it’s time for another exciting installment of… Drive-By Blogging!

(I’m thinking of turning this into a regular feature here at Simple Tricks, by the way. It seems like there are always many more items that I want to comment on than I ever manage to actually devote entire entries to. Sigh…)

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I don’t know if anyone else is following this story or cares in the least, but I have a morbid fascination for it, so here’s what’s happening with former astronaut Lisa Nowak:

• Her attorneys formally entered a “not guilty” plea last Thursday. (The article notes that this is in addition to an earlier, written plea, which I’m assuming is the one I mentioned here; I’m still not certain how or why you would plead twice like this.)
• Lisa, a US Navy officer who was technically just on loan to NASA, has a new assignment developing flight-training lesson plans at an air base in Corpus Christi, Texas. A Navy spokesman indicated that she would be working in “more of a course developer role, rather than be[ing] a direct instructor.” No doubt this is a tactful way of saying that she’ll be safely confined to a cubicle somewhere and not allowed to interact with the impressionable trainees.
• And finally (and not surprisingly), NASA has announced the formation of a new committee to review the healthcare services the agency currently offers to astronauts, as well as how astronauts are screened for both mental and physical health. I imagine one of the goals of this review is to figure out how Nowak’s, um, condition went unnoticed until she became dangerous.

Lisa Nowak’s trial is expected to begin on July 30.

This is no surprise: NASA has fired Lisa Nowak. Or, as this somewhat more detailed article more politely phrases it, she has been “pulled… from her spaceflyer detail in a mutual agreement with Naval authorities.” (Nowak is a captain in the U.S. Navy who has been on assignment to NASA as an astronaut.)

NASA’s spokesperson was quick to point out that this action was “not a reflection of NASA’s belief in Nowak’s innocence or guilt,” but was done simply “because the agency lacks the administrative means to deal appropriately with the criminal charges facing Nowak.”

I imagine the agency was also eager to distance itself from this whole situation, too, before the dirt starts flying in the courtroom. But maybe I’m just cynical…

Astronaut Lisa Nowak was formally charged with attempted kidnapping today for that little cross-country drive and assault stunt she pulled on a romantic rival. (Florida prosecutors have “declined to file an attempted murder charge [as] recommended by police”; apparently, when she pled not guilty a couple weeks back, it was not “not guilty to attempted murder” as I wrote, but not guilty “on all counts that police recommended.” I’ve never heard of that one before. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of anyone entering any kind of plea before being actually charged. This case just keeps getting weirder…)

Also, in a related development, prosecutors have released e-mail exchanges made between astronaut Bill Oefelein, the object of Nowak’s obsession, and her apparent rival in this triangle, Colleen Shipman. Copies of these messages were found in Nowak’s possession, and there’s speculation that reading them led to her breakdown. There’s a news story on the e-mails here, and ABC News is publishing the text of some of them here, if you’re feeling especially voyeuristic.

I recognize that my interest in these gory details may be more than a little hypocritical given my recent diatribe about our gossipy media, but I find all this sex-and-madness-among-astronauts fascinating. When I was growing up, idolizing the Apollo veterans and the very first shuttle pilots, I saw them as perfect beings made of white marble. Later, when shuttle flights seemed to become routine, the astronauts didn’t become people in my eyes; they became anonymous, little more than interchangeable spacecraft components. Except those who died on Challenger and Columbia, of course — they were martyrs. But now we have red-blooded, 100% human astronauts floating right in front of us, doing all the nasty, mundane, boring, horrifying, and exalting things everybody else does. And ugly as the scene may be, as intrusive and unwelcome as my gaze probably is for Nowak, Shipman, and Oefelin, I find that I can’t look away…

The death of Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears’ decision to emulate Sinead O’Connor’s coiffure (or lack thereof) have pushed whacko astronaut Lisa Nowak out of the media spotlight, so I thought I’d pass along the word that she has entered a plea of “not guilty” to the charge of attempted murder.

Just doing my part to help out those poor, overworked tabloid writers…

[Update: In a related story, it seems that NASA has contigency plans for what to do if an astronaut wigs out while in space. It’s pretty interesting… it involves duct tape, bungee cords, and forced administration of drugs. Just as I’ve always imagined. Oh, all right, I’ve always imagined that you’d just stun the nutbar with a phaser, but since NASA doesn’t have phasers…]

Why don’t we take a break from all the doom and gloom of the Trolley Square thing and enjoy a little music video by The Phantom Surfers, inspired by the strange story of astronaut Lisa Nowak:

Courtesy of Boing Boing, naturally enough.