14 DAY TRIAL // A recent independent panel report regarding astronauts drinking heavily before launch for the International Space Station creates numerous aftershocks, after NASA officials dismissed the allegation. Now, the Russians are also denying the events.
The panel reported that astronauts had been drinking less than 12 hours before launches and they were allowed to fly despite warning from surgeons and other astronauts, saying that the ones involved were so drunk they posed a flight risk.
The panel chairman, Air Force Col. Richard Bachmann Jr., said Friday at least one astronaut had been involved with alcohol before launching aboard the Soyuz space shuttle, heading for the ISS.
Officials from the Russian space agency say there are no reports of such incidents occurring and that no drunk astronaut had been allowed to take off in the Soyuz, from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome, reacting to the allegations.
"We categorically deny the possibility that this could have happened at Baikonur," Igor Panarin, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, Roskosmos, told The Associated Press.
"In the days at Baikonur before the launch, this is absolutely impossible. They are constantly watched by medics and psychiatrists." Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov told the AP that drastic medical requirements, as well as continuous screening and the demands of the job in space made it inconceivable that either astronauts or cosmonauts could fly drunk.
"They are the elite of their society," said Solovyov. "The responsibility dominates your thoughts. In your head, you know this is a state program and this dominates your mind and directs all your actions. For me this is nonsense."
Alcohol is strictly forbidden aboard the ISS, although some astronauts think one shot of wine or brandy should be permitted, as it relaxes and calms the cosmonauts after a hard day's work. Salizhan Sharipov returned from an ISS mission in April 2005 and made quite a sensation with this statement.
"This should be done only to do one's work better and relieve the psychological stress," he said, according to the Russian wire service RIA Novosti.