Word: astronauts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pilot of the command ship during Apollo ll's 1969 historic flight to the moon, Astronaut Mike Collins had perhaps less reason than his lunar-walking buddies to fret about the clumsy, complex garments that protected them from the harsh vacuum of space. But some of today's astronauts are seriously worried about just how precarious s space suits can be. In a report as bluntly critical as any issued by NASA since its post-mortem on the disastrous 1967 launch-pad fire that killed three astronauts, the space agency has found alarmingly sloppy oversights...
...formal inquiry follows the cancellation of two scheduled space walks during last month's fifth flight of Columbia. They were to be the first EVAS (for extravehicular activity) by American astronauts since Skylab crew members exited into space in 1973 to make external repairs on their orbital laboratory. Mission controllers called off the latest walks after a vital oxygen-and-coolant circulating fan in Astronaut Joe Allen's backpack wheezed and sputtered, and the pressure in Astronaut Bill Lenoir's suit failed to reach acceptable levels...
...economic issues are most important. Washington, for instance, objects to Brazil's subsidies of exports to the U.S., especially of shoes, orange juice, steel and airplanes. Instead, Brazil wants more direct American aid. In a deft but easy bit of diplomacy, Reagan invited Brazil to send a prospective astronaut to the U.S. for training and, eventually, to fly on a space shuttle mission. (The President is copying the Soviets, who have flown astronauts from Cuba and France...
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...
...last week's orbital glitches ended so happily. For the first time since 1974, U.S. astronauts were scheduled for a space walk outside their cabin. But the EVA (NASAese for extravehicular activity) had to be postponed when Astronaut Bill Lenoir, 43, one of the space agency's new breed of scientifically trained mission specialists, came down with a bad case of space sickness, a puzzling ailment that afflicts about half of all travelers in zero-g. Lenoir may have contributed to his own queasiness by indulging a passion for spicy-hot jalapeño peppers during the flight...