Wow, the space program suddenly got interesting again.

Forget jaunts to the International Space Station or around Earth. The most publicized recent trip by a NASA astronaut was the 900 miles Lisa Nowak drove from Houston to Orlando, one that led to an attempted murder charge as part of an apparent bizarre love triangle.

Nowak, 43, a Navy captain, Naval Academy grad, ex-test pilot, married mother of three and all around super-achiever, drove from Texas to Florida – wearing diapers, no less, to avoid pit stops – allegedly to confront a woman she believed to be her romantic rival for the affections of another astronaut.

Leave it to human foibles to trump the best science can offer. After all, astronauts are some of the most poked, prodded, psychologically tested humans on the planet whose gravity they seek to defy.

According to reports, Nowak – nicknamed Robochick on her shuttle mission – rushed to Orlando to meet her alleged rival’s plane, also coming from Houston. Police say Nowak, wearing a disguise, boarded an airport shuttle bus and trailed her quarry, Colleen Shipman, to her car, where she asked Shipman for help, then blasted her with pepper spray.

Nowak maintains she just wanted to talk. But police say they found e-mail exchanges between Shipman and William Oefelein, the male in this space-cowgirl sandwich, along with a folding knife with a 4-inch blade, a steel mallet, a compressed-air pistol, several feet of rubber tubing, half a dozen pairs of latex gloves and directions to Shipman’s house.

Some chat.

The find led to charges of, among other things, attempted murder and attempted kidnapping Feb. 6.

And it led plenty of us to wonder: diapers?

OK, I know astronauts wear them on spacewalks and re-entries. But honey, ain’t no man alive worth donning Depends in lieu of Love’s Truck Stop.

You can practically – pardon the pun – smell a trend coming on. Just as NASA’s Tang suddenly appeared on every breakfast table, you know astrodiapers will be the hot new travel must-have to circumvent long lines for airplane bathrooms.

This sordid saga should be a lesson for every smug yuppie who believes love spats involving mallets, wigs and knives only happen in trailer parks, on factory floors or among the specimens who appear on “The Jerry Springer Show.”

Apart from becoming president, the job of astronaut may be the next-most-selective in the country, if not the world. These men and women wear the annoyingly high gloss of the uber-elite. And they’re among the most studied people on the planet, subjected to pretty much every battery of tests scientists can dream up.

I’ve been thinking about Nowak’s hobbies, listed in her official NASA biography. What could happen that would make an astronaut who enjoys gourmet cooking, crossword puzzles, piano and African violets speed down I-10 in a diaper?

Just goes to show that, despite all their self-control, judgment and discipline, Robochicks can still be subject to the currents and eddies of emotion. Still, despite endless hours of psychological screening, are apparently able to obsess. And even snap.

This probably isn’t the best publicity the space agency could get right now, coming on the heels of President Bush’s widely panned trip back to the moon and to Mars. In the wake of this debacle, how could NASA be sure that any astronaut making the 2.5 year trip to the Red Planet wouldn’t crack?

Thank heavens no one was maimed or killed here, although this incident will cause its share of hurt among the parties involved. The good folks at NASA – and I do mean that – are surely as mystified by Nowak’s actions as the rest of us.

Anyone at NASA hoping this story vanishes quickly will be disappointed. In a country sick of turmoil in Iraq, squabbling in Congress and brass-monkey-freezing weather, the “astronut” episode will prove a delicious distraction.

And prove that even the biggest overachievers among us are still human.