A week ago, I’ll bet not a person in a thousand could correctly have answered the question “Who is Lisa Nowak?” Now the nation knows her primarily through oh-so-witty headlines such as “Dark side of the loon.”

The past week has been a fast free-fall for such a high-flying hero. About 20 years ago, Lisa was a high school valedictorian. A dozen years ago, she earned her master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, flew as a test pilot and gave birth to a son. Nine years ago, she became an astronaut.

Seven months ago, she flew aboard the space shuttle Discovery, gathering acclaim for ably maneuvering the shuttle’s robotic arm.

Less than a month ago, her 19-year marriage crumbled. Last weekend, her journey from hero to space oddity began when she decided to travel 900 miles to confront Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman, the woman she had decided was the obstacle to developing a romantic relationship with fellow astronaut, Oregon State University graduate William Oefelein.

Nowak assembled a bizarre checklist that included rubber tubing, pepper spray, a metal mallet and that irresistible detail, a diaper she wore so that nothing would interrupt her wild drive.

We may never know or understand her real intent. Nowak sprayed Shipman with pepper spray. The damage to Shipman’s and Oefelein’s reputations n and to NASA’s manned space program n may be more lasting and serious. This would be unfair, but the court of public opinion often is unjust.

Attacks on NASA’s huge budget (proposed for $17.3 billion in 2007) are an annual event. The space shuttle program is due to be retired in 2010. There is a growing chorus that suggests manned space flight is really just an expensive public relations program that enables funding of the more scientifically valid research and unmanned space probes.

I believe it’s valid to keep humans at the forefront of space development because that exploration is for our benefit. It is in keeping with the most laudable human impulse to explore and to understand the unknown.

Part of that exploration should be turned inward, toward understand the mechanisms that caused Lisa Nowak to recently fall so far off of the honorable course she’d followed for most of her life. Hopefully the laughter and ridicule over her exploits increasingly can give way to compassion and to understanding.

Theresa Novak is the Opinion page editor at the Corvallis Gazette-Times. An audio version of this column is available at gazettetimes.com under the “GT to Go” link.