Word: astronaut
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...decision by NASA doctors proved sound. Throughout his rigorous preparation, the geologist-astronaut has maintained superb health and excelled as a trainee. He ranked second in his class of 50 at Air Force flight school, and has spent countless hours on field trips everywhere from Iceland to Hawaii teaching fellow astronauts how to spot and select geologically significant rocks. He worked closely with NASA scientists in devising scoops, shovels and other tools for the moon. Says NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz: "If anyone deserves a flight, it is Jack Schmitt...
Schmitt's companion on the surface of the moon will be the mission commander, Navy Captain Eugene Cernan, 38. A veteran astronaut, Cernan took a space walk during the 1966 earth-orbiting flight of Gemini 9 and flew the Apollo 10 lunar module to within nine miles of the moon's surface in 1969, during the final test of the Apollo system before an actual landing. Born on Chicago's North Side to first-generation Czechoslovak-American parents, he excelled in athletics in high school but turned down college football scholarships in order to study engineering...
...Eagle Scout, a math whiz and an all-around athlete. After graduating from the University of Kansas, where he held an NROTC scholarship, he won his wings at Pensacola, Fla. Subsequently he flew 100 carrier missions off Indochina and became the first Viet Nam veteran in the astronaut ranks. A modish dresser (typical garb: white slacks, maroon sports jacket, pink tie and shirt), he is married and the father of two children: a daughter, 13, and a son, 11. As pilot of the command ship America, he will remain in orbit around the moon while Schmitt and Cernan explore...
BEFORE Apollo 15 carried him to the moon in July 1971, Astronaut Worden had never been particularly introspective. Poetry had had no place in his life; he rarely read any, and he had never written a line. But something happened to Worden as he orbited the moon alone in the command ship Endeavor while his crewmates explored the lunar surface. Since his return, he has been moved to put his feelings about space flight into verse, some of it deeply personal and soul searching. Worden's new interest is only one example of an extraordinary postflight phenomenon. In spite...
Deeply Moved. Schweickart himself is a striking example of what might be called the Lunar Effect. Before the flight he was totally committed to his life as an astronaut. But as he floated outside Apollo 9 on his space walk 160 miles above the earth, he was overwhelmed by emotion. "I completely lost my identity as an American astronaut," he says. "I felt a part of everyone and everything sweeping past me below." Now he spends long hours at a Houston clinic for drug addicts, takes part in a volunteer telephone-counseling service for troubled youngsters, and is involved...