NASA curtails nutty astronauts

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NASA has detailed, written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space after the apparent breakdown of Lisa Nowak, arrested this month on charges she tried to kill a woman she regarded as her rival for another astronaut's affections. A mentally unstable astronaut could cause all kinds of havoc that could endanger the three-crew members aboard the space station or the six or seven who typically fly aboard the shuttle.

It says that the astronaut's crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary. A flight surgeon on the ground and the commander in space would decide on a case-by-case basis whether to abort the flight, in the case of the shuttle, or send the astronaut home, if the episode took place on the international space station. A gun would be out of the question; a bullet could pierce a spaceship and kill everyone.

NASA and its Russian counterpart drew up the checklist for the space station in 2001. The space-station checklist is part of a 1,051-page document that contains instructions for dealing with every possible medical situation in space.

Space station medical kits contain tranquilisers and anti-depression, anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medications. Shuttle medical kits have anti-psychotic medication but not antidepressants, since they take several weeks to be effective and shuttle flights last less than two weeks.

Handling behavioral emergencies takes up five pages.

Space station astronauts talk weekly via long-distance hookup to a flight surgeon and every two weeks to a psychologist, so any psychiatric disorder would probably be detected before it became so serious that the astronaut had to be brought home, Hartsfield said.