Did NASA's Psych Screening Fail?

I can see the Hollywood pitch meeting now.

"It’s about an astronaut love triangle."
"Sounds kinda lame."
"But she wears a wig, a diaper and plans to kill."
"Nah, too over the top.  Thanks anyway."

Real life offers no shortage of lunacy. As the dust settles from the shocking Lisa Nowak story (and wet dream for the media) some serious questions have to be raised about NASA’s screening process.

According to her bio, aside from enjoying "rubber stamps" and "African violets," she "completed two years of training and evaluation back in the late ’90s."  As someone who blasted off in the summer of ’06, you would have to imagine there was a re-evaluation of her psychological state, no?

NASA was able to log her last mission to the second (306 hours, 37 minutes and 54 seconds) but couldn’t tell she was a nutter?

Which raises a career question which can be asked across the board: Should organizations, especially ones where other people’s safety is at stake, regularly check your mental competency?

Sounds intrusive.  But you’d probably sign on the dotted line to have senior citizens forced to take a driving aptitude every few years, right?

I don’t know how much damage Ms. Nowak could have done with her robotic arm in space, but I do know that some serious money disappears up in space with every liftoff.

Maybe she was perfectly normal before.  Scott Peterson might have been.  OJ too.  At least she can blame it on 13 days in space.  Is there any precedent for that?  I’m not a betting man, but my money is on "space made me do it."

Learn more about NASA’s Astronaut Selection and Training here.

There are currently 321 astronauts.  One might be on the way out.  Apply today!  It might be an easier job to snag then you imagined.