It's not often that the media finds an opportunity to write about scientists' sex lives, but when they do, you can be sure they'll make the most of it. The cover story of the current issue of Texas Monthly discusses not only the salacious details behind NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak's psychological meltdown, but also explores what the Nowak affair reveals about the dirty laundry lurking inside NASA--and we're not just talking about the diapers:

If the story of the Nowak-Oefelein-Shipman love triangle allowed an unusual and occasionally bizarre view of the traditionally opaque NASA subculture, it offered something else too: a peek inside the world of America's space agency in the dying days of the shuttle program and in the shadow of a disastrous crash--Columbia, in 2003--that illustrated in excruciating detail just how fundamentally purposeless, money guzzling, overpressurized, and phenomenally dangerous the shuttle was 26 years after its first mission.

Aside from covering the details of a workplace romance gone awry, the article tries to make the case that Nowak lost control because NASA is a poorly-managed pressure cooker without a release valve. But if that's true, why aren't more NASA employees going postal? Oh, wait. They are.

Read on: Lust in Space [Texas Monthly] (Subscription required)