Word: cargoing
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These orbital theatrics have a high purpose. In pushing off from Challenger's open cargo bay, Astronauts Bruce McCandless II, 46, and Robert Stewart, 41, both of whom are making their initial shuttle trips, will be rehearsing the first repair of a satellite in orbit. That is slated to take place in April, when astronauts attempt to retrieve and revive a $150 million robot scientific observatory nicknamed Solar Max, which has been spinning helplessly since it broke down three years ago. If this tinkering succeeds, it could pave the way for even more ambitious efforts, including the assembly...
...moment, however, NASA'S attention was more pressingly diverted. Just eight hours into the flight, Mission Specialist Ronald McNair, 33, a physicist making his first flight, successfully sent Western Union's $75 million Westar VI spinning out of Challenger's big cargo bay. But soon all contact with Westar, built by Hughes Aircraft, was lost. Its transmitters were silent. Ground-based trackers could not tell whether its booster, which was to have propelled it into a geostationary "parking place" 22,300 miles above the equator, had misfired or some onboard electronics had failed. Desperately trying to bring...
...flight plan calls for the astronauts to move up to 300 ft. away from the shuttle. Only one man will fly at a time; the other will remain tethered in the cargo bay. If the MMU'S thrusters fail, a stranded astronaut could be rescued by his partner or even the shuttle. No tethers are used during the lengthy, complex sorties because an astronaut might become tangled in a line. During the space walks, the astronauts will practice snaring Solar Max by hooking themselves onto the SPAS. But this is not as easy as it sounds. In zero...
Preliminary studies agree that the station will have to be freighted piecemeal into orbit inside the space shuttle's big cargo bay. This "building-block approach," as the chief of NASA's Space-Station Task Force, John Hodge, calls it, will take a minimum of five flights. The components will include two or more cylinder-shaped modules, each with the volume of a large recreational vehicle. These will serve as working and living ("habitation modules" in NASAese) quarters for the astronauts. Solar panels will catch sunlight and turn it into electricity. Huge radiators will shed excess heat from...
...hotel bathrooms. Following high school, he went to work for TWA as a mechanic and moonlighted at an auto-repair garage. After selling surplus airplane parts and advising competing airlines and then TWA on engine design, Paulson in 1951 set up his own business converting surplus passenger planes into cargo aircraft. It grew, and by 1978 he was ready to begin building airplanes on his own. He acquired Grumman's money-losing corporate-aircraft division in Savannah, Ga., renamed it Gulfstream, improved quality, cut costs and accelerated delivery times. When Gulfstream went public in April, Paulson collected $85 million...