Love triangle in space!

If you’ve been anywhere but on Earth lately, you may have missed the news that NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak was charged with attempted murder in a dramatic attack on Air Force engineer Colleen Shipman over a relationship the two apparently had with William Oefelein, another rocketeer. A wig and diapers were involved; don’t ask. To my mind, there are three primary reasons that this story has sent the media into total hyperdrive: 1) It’s a love triangle. 2) Of astronauts. 3) Starring: A lady astronaut. (With a wig and diapers. I said, don’t ask.) As Big Ink notes: “This is kind of awful, mostly because it’s the kind of human tragedy that happens every day, only we don’t hear about it because it’s not astronauts.” Right. This one’s a biggie in part because we think of astronauts as scary smart, not … scary. But also? It’s Catfight! In! Space! Girl-on-girl action at zero G! When it comes to media frenzies, it rarely gets better than that. Fortunately — if I may remind us, in an effort to restore a little balance to the universe — when it comes to lady astronaut accomplishments, it actually does get better than that. Herewith, a shout-out to U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, who two days ago spent over 22 hours in space tweaking the International Space Station’s cooling system, thus setting the world space-walking record for women.