Could 'I Dream Of Jeannie' happen in real life?

I of course am not referring to the riotously impossible
circumstance of Major Nelson's many, many spaceflights --- I think he
had two in the Mercury capsule alone, within a single year --- but to
his successfully living with an unmarried (and foreign!) woman.

It's legendary --- to the point one starts suspecting the
rumors are overblown --- that the press corps kept silence during the
Space Race days about astronaut infidelities, lest the fun of the
whole project get bogged down in scandal and whatnot. However, Duane G
raveline's divorce (in 1966) did get him kicked out of the program so
fast he barely showed up on film. Deke Slayton claimed it was because
a divorce would interfere with the job, but it was the 60s, after all,
and the press was paying attention.

However, Nelson was a veteran astronaut when he met Jeannie,
and a bachelor, and, despite considerable distractions seems to have
met all the astronaut office's performance demands. So, given that,
could he get away with it? If he could, would he stop being able
to get away with it after the Apollo 1 Fire and the increased press
skepticism regarding NASA, or after Apollo 11 and the end of the
Space Race as an urgent national priority? If he couldn't then, when
could he?

(I imagine astronauts could live with someone of the opposite
sex today without attracting attention, but 2013 is a phenomenally
different world from 1963.)





--
http://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/ Joseph Nebus
Latest: Reading the Comics, 16 May 2013 http://wp.me/p1RYhY-sf
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