Like a low-Earth-orbit Romeo and Juliet, the couple faced obstacles, most notably resistance from the Russian Aviation & Space Agency. "Russia doesn't recognize proxy marriages," his superiors decreed. "The bride needs to be approved by the Russian government." Russian air force chief, Col. Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov reportedly told reporters that a "cosmonaut mustn't behave like a movie star."

Why not? Human spaceflight could do with a few bad boys and sirens blazing a trail to the heavens. Let's face it folks, most astronauts are about as sizzling and sexy as the average UPS truck driver. In a world where so-called "heroes" fall into disgrace at a rate of almost one a week -- Kobe Bryant, Martha Stewart, William Bennett, anyone on Wall Street  -- maybe it's time we took some of our real-life heroes and gave them a long overdue makeover.

Case in point: If ever there were candidates who could challenge the style and fashion expertise of the makeover mavens on the Bravo network's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, it has to be the U.S. astronaut corps, whose flight lockers brim with powder blue and road-work-cone orange jumpsuits. NASA has a visibility problem, and it stems from the achromatic government-issue image the agency has projected since the Eisenhower-era. On paper, the astronauts are every bit as dynamic and impressive as "right stuff" adventurers should be, but in interviews and on video they are so constrained and bland, it seems they've been neutered. Even NASA chief Sean O'Keefe has been heard to lament the lack of an astronaut-hero image gracing a Wheaties box.

In the months leading up to STS-107, shuttle Columbia's last mission, I learned much about the crew from official biographies and NASA-controlled interviews. Pilot William McCool came from a military family background; Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, born in India, enjoyed flying aerobatics and tail-wheel planes; Mission Specialist David Brown had once been an acrobat in a circus. Fascinating stuff to be sure, but like one of the science experiments the Columbia crew performed in orbit, the facts were hermetically sealed, preserved for distant study and devoid of grit, dust and discomfort.

Americans are like Princess Leia: we love scoundrels. The cheering crowds outside Manhattan's Federal Court building during Mafia thug John Gotti's trial-were they any different than the throngs of O.J. Simpson fans that urged him on as he evaded police on the Los Angeles freeways? Americans like the rebel, the cad, the smart-ass with all the answers who takes your money and your girl with a tip of his hat and a sly wink. As for astronauts, well, as a rule they just don't do that. Or, more likely, if they do we never hear about it.

NASA isn't completely to blame for its exile to the far side of fame; the mass media certainly shoulders most of the responsibility. In an era where ludicrous amounts of TV time, print inches and Internet bandwidth are afforded people who are neither particularly interesting nor talented (J-Lo, Ben Affleck), yet are overexposed and overpaid (J-Lo, Ben Affleck), true heroes go unsung and remain grossly underpaid. Informed, seemingly by osmosis, I am privy to far more about Kobe Bryant and Martha Stewart's legal travails than I want, let alone care to know. And all the while, drowned out by all this pop-culture static, the ISS caretaker crew -- Malenchenko and his U.S. counterpart Ed Lu -- help move humanity forward in relative obscurity.

NASA has heroes. It just needs to do something with them beyond orbiting the planet at dizzying speeds. Send them to Mars or back to the moon. Either would ignite the public's imagination. Or do we have to wait until the skies are teeming with Chinese taikonauts before we take action?

Maybe it's the quality of America's popular heroes, celebrities and leaders. (Or worse, the quality of their admirers). Overall, many seem rather thin of character, a fact especially apparent for those who flash virtue as their calling card. Look at William Bennett, Scold-in-Chief of the American conservative movement who turned out to be an inveterate gambler. For more than 20 years he waved a disapproving finger at the U.S., hand on hip, toe-tapping with indignant impatience; so busy preaching the Ten Commandments he broke a few of the Seven Deadly Sins without so much as breaking a sweat. (The bank in Vegas, on the other hand, is a different story)

In the sports world, where reporting is nothing more than a conspiracy between the fans and athletes, most of the coverage of the Bryant scandal du jour is laughable, with its emphasis on how the 24-year-old athlete's endorsement deals are in jeopardy. An overpaid athlete barely out of his teens, rarely supervised, finds himself on the docket accused of a violent crime? I'm shocked, shocked. In the era of $30 million sneaker deals where cash smooths over every little bump along the way, what do you expect?

And didn't anyone tell Martha Stewart that lying isn't a good thing?

As we near the end of the Columbia tragedy investigation, the shuttle crew members have become spectral figures, lost in the not-really-a-revelation, yet-not-really-news fact that NASA is government bureaucracy with all the spontaneity-crushing, politically correct, emotionally flat, risk-averse inflexibility that comes with the territory. And it is an organization where mistakes are made and important messages fall through the cracks. Like the intelligence failures of the FBI and the CIA prior to 9/11, the Columbia disaster didn't occur in a vacuum. It's your government at work.

Yet the actions of the Columbia crew -- exciting, honorable and heroic -- seem negligible in the grand scheme of the American pop-cultural hegemony. I could care less about Bryant and Stewart, but I can't seem to avoid them. The U.S. still dominates in human spaceflight, yet its champions lack the esprit de corps needed to be interviewed by Barbara Walters or Larry King.

Yuri Malenchenko and his bride have been accused of being celebrity seekers. More power to them. Maybe more astronauts should act like movie stars. I'm not saying they should hang out in Hollywood's Viper Room, check into the Hazeldon Clinic, then come clean on the pages of People magazine. (Though I know I'd read that issue.) But if human spaceflight is to take its place front and center as the paragon of American scientific and technological prowess, offering not only us but the world the hope of a future without war and want, beyond the bonds of Earth, then maybe we need to see astronauts under a more vigorous light -- even if that must be the spotlight of celebrity.

Maybe in the future NASA should let the astronauts be human -- faults and all -- before a tragedy like Columbia puts them forever out of our reach.