[NYTr] Russians Deny Astronaut Drinking on Soyuz Spacecraft

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via The International Herald Tribune - Jul 28, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/28/europe/EU-GEN-Russia-Astronaut-Drinking.php

Russian official denies report astronaut drunk on Soyuz space flight

The Associated Press

MOSCOW: Russia's space agency denied Saturday that an astronaut could
have flown drunk aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from its Baikonur
cosmodrome, reacting to allegations made by an independent US panel on
astronaut health.

"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."

Air Force Col. Richard Bachmann Jr., the panel chairman, said Friday
that an astronaut suspected of having overindulged was cleared to fly
on the space shuttle. Another astronaut in a similar condition, he
said, was reported to have flown aboard a Soyuz spacecraft headed to
the International Space Station.

In another damaging revelation about the U.S. space program, NASA said
Thursday that a space program worker had cut the wires on a computer
slated to fly on the international space station next month, aboard the
shuttle Endeavour.

Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov told The Associated Press that the
tight medical requirements and the demands of the job ahead made it
inconceivable that either astronauts or cosmonauts would fly drunk.

"They are the elite of their society," said Solovyov, who holds the
world record for space walks with more than 82 hours. "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."

Several newspapers here pointed out that the allegations flew in the
face of long standing stereotypes in the U.S. media that paint the
Russians as hard-drinking and reckless while portraying Americans as
stalwart and sober.

In a story headlined "NASA brings a bottle: American astronauts turned
out to be alco-nauts," Moskovsky Komsomlets pointed out that Russia
suffered the indignity of having a cosmonaut lampooned as an unshaven
boozehound in the 1998 Hollywood hit 'Armageddon.'

"After this news the Americans should be ashamed to rewatch the
blockbuster,'" the tabloid advised. The newspaper Pravda's
English-language web site, meanwhile, carried a story Friday headlined
"NASA employs drunkards and saboteurs."

The official government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazetta was more
restrained. "Scandal in the Heavens," declared the headline.

Despite official denials of drinking before Russian flights to the
space station, cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station were permitted
to imbibe moderately. The aging space station was abandoned, plunging
to earth in 2001.

According to newspaper accounts, cosmonaut Alexander Poleshchuk, who
flew on Mir in 1993, told of removing panels hunting for bottles of
cognac squirreled away by previous tenants.

Alcohol consumption is forbidden aboard the International Space
Station, which has caused some mild grumbling. Cosmonaut Salizhan
Sharipov returned from an ISS mission in April 2005, and caused a stir
when he said the crew should be allowed a shot of wine or brandy daily.

"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. "But only to improve our work, to better cope with the
psychological stress."

Last year, a British newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, reported that
some Russian space officials advocated lifting the alcohol ban on ISS
crewmembers because of the stress of working up to seven months in
space.

"Twenty grams of a good cognac would be good," the newspaper quoted the
commander of the Cosmonaut Corps at the training center near Moscow as
saying.

[Associated Press Writer Douglas Birch contributed to this story.]