Word: astronaut
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Business in a real sense. Astronaut Vance Brand, 51, had barely brought down the shuttle in a textbook landing-"painting the numbers on the runway," as pilots say-when other NASA hands began thinking of collecting the fees for Columbia's services. During the five-day mission, the shuttle had carried aloft two commercial communications satellites, one of them American, the other Canadian. NASA will earn more than $18 million for this orbital freight hauling, hardly enough to cover Columbia' s fuel bill, but a first small step in turning the shuttle into a self-supporting enterprise...
...once again made history. Firing its small thrusters, it rolled and turned so that its big cargo bay faced in the direction of flight. Clamshell-shaped sun covers automatically opened, and the cylindrical parcel underneath them was set spinning (at precisely 52 r.p.m.). With the press of a button, Astronaut Bill Lenoir, 43, fired explosive bolts, releasing the spring-loaded clamps holding the parcel. Out it popped, like some extraterrestrial jack-in-the-box. Forty-five minutes later, after Columbia had pulled about 20 miles away and cautiously turned up its tile-covered belly to protect itself from the blast...
Life as an astronaut, however, is not all fun and games. "Basically, what you do around here is on-the-job training." Hoffman says, explaining that most astronauts spend their time helping to develop new equipment or computer software for the shuttle, using simulations or working with contractors and scientists directly. The end goal is attaining a thorough understanding of how the space shuttle operates Because astronauts may spend as much as a year dealing with one particular system, each man tends to develop an area or two of expertise Hoffman has written a training manual on the Orbital Maneuvering...
Invitably in the course of media coverage of this shuttle, the focus shifts to Tum Wolfe's The Right Stuff, a compelling description of the early astronauts, their legacy as true pioneers, men and men only--who scraped the edges of space in a variety of sleek rocket planes and flying contraption. Today, Hoffman notes, the astronaut corps is comprised of people of all backgrounds. His group includes the first three Blacks and an Oriental. Hoffman, himself is one of the first Jewish astronauts...
Hoffman says it is hard to imagine being an astronaut forever, but that at the moment, he is in an ideal position: as an astronomer, he may one day be able to observe space from space, where the atmosphere-free environment provides the best possible view of the cosmos. Although there is no guarantee that he will have such an opportunity. Hoffman says at least that he "fully expects" to spend the rest of his life as a research scientist. Although he won't commit himself to the possibility of serving as an astronomer on some future space station. Barbara...