The New Spokeswoman For Pampers

NASA continues to have its share of problems. If it's not one of their shuttles blowing up, then it's one of their astronauts.

Lisa M. Nowak flew on the Discovery shuttle mission last July, quite an accomplishment for the married mother of three children. She appeared to have everything going for her.

Then this past Monday she was arrested at the Orlando airport after a confrontation in the parking lot with another female astronaut, Colleen Shipman. The charges include attempted murder.

It turns out Nowak had the major hots for a third astronaut, William A. Oefelein. The problem was, however, that apparently Oefelein and Shipman were already involved with one another. Astronauts, however, are a resourceful bunch, and Nowak was no exception.

Nowak drove from Houston all the way to Orlando--over 900 miles--to catch Shipman in the parking lot of the airport. She had a carefully laid plan, involving a BB gun that looked like a real 9mm semiautomatic, a steel mallet, rubber tubing, and pepper spray. And to avoid wasting time on bathroom breaks, she even wore diapers.

Yes, you read that right: DIAPERS!!! If nothing else, NASA knows how to train its astronauts for all kinds of unforeseen circumstances.

Can you imagine being stuck on a space shuttle, in orbit some 150 miles above the Earth, with Nowak? That would be a helluva time to find out that one of your crew mates is a psycho killer.

It would make a great movie. We could call it Fatal Attraction II: A Space Odyssey. Michael Douglas goes on a spacewalk to fix the Hubble Space Telescope and his air hose is suddenly severed. He goes spinning off into outer space like Frank Poole. Is it even possible to boil a live rabbit in outer space?

With any luck, Cops will film an episode at NASA headquarters next season.