The story of astronaut Lisa Nowak's alleged attempt to kidnap and possibly murder a perceived love rival is one ripe for media fascination. It becomes even riper when you consider one of the more salient details: the part about the diaper.
LUKE BURBANK: For those of us in the news business, this astronaut story is sort of like a delicious ice cream Sunday of news.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: NPR's Luke Burbank.</s>LUKE BURBANK: I mean, they're astronauts. Okay, that's the ice cream. It's a possible love triangle, which is sort of the hot fudge. And then there's the cherry on top, that weird little detail that elevates the story from a mere news dessert to the full-blown media obsession it's become.</s>LUKE BURBANK: Unidentified Woman: And in a bizarre display of NASA ingenuity, diapers.</s>Ms. BARBARA WALTERS (Co-Host): And when they wear those suits, you know, they cannot go to the bathroom, so they wear a kind of diaper...</s>Ms. BARBARA WALTERS (Co-Host): Unidentified Man #1: It was like she approached this would-be kidnapping like it was a shuttle mission.</s>Ms. BARBARA WALTERS (Co-Host): Unidentified Man #2: Exactly, and apparently that prompted the use of the - of the adult diaper.</s>LUKE BURBANK: Who's that last guy?  Anyway, yes, the diapers that Lisa Nowak allegedly wore while driving to Florida have captured the imagination of a nation. Some NASA blogs have dubbed her trip the 900 mile diaper drive. News outlets have scrambled their space experts to find out everything they can about the fancy NASA diapers that astronauts wear. Not that we at NPR would ever dignify such a crass topic, but if we did, we'd tell you that in the space world the diapers are called MAGS, or maximum absorption garments. We'd also tell you that they can last from up to eight to ten hours and that they're filled with a chemical called sodium polyacrylate which absorbs a thousand times its weight in water.</s>LUKE BURBANK: And if we'd already gone that far, we'd probably tell you that unless Nowak boosted a pair of those official NASA MAGs, she's probably just wearing an over the counter pair of adult diapers. Depend undergarments, many have speculated. And since we'd already gone there, we'd tell you that a quick check of the stock of Kimberly Clarke, the company that makes Depends, that stock peaked on Tuesday, the very day this ice cream sundae of a story about diapers hit the news. But we wouldn't talk about that on NPR.</s>LUKE BURBANK: Luke Burbank, NPR News.