Word: conrad
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Power Shortage. As Conrad and his crew ended their second week in space, those chances seemed dim indeed. Skylab's power shortage-which resulted from the jamming of one solar panel and the loss of another during launch, when the orbital workshop's meteoroid and thermal shielding ripped off-had suddenly been compounded by a severe new problem. Two of Skylab's 18 storage batteries had failed...
Thus Mission Control gave the astronauts permission for the space walk. After donning their pressure suits, all three astronauts moved from the orbital-workshop area of Skylab into the multiple docking adapter. Then, while Weitz remained behind, Conrad...
Working in the weightless environment proved difficult and strenuous; Kerwin's pulse went up as high as 150 beats a minute. "Take it easy," advised Space Veteran Conrad,* whose own heartbeat rose only to 110. While Conrad held the rope to the cutters, Kerwin tried to direct the pole so that the blades hooked around the aluminum strip. "I can't stabilize myself," he complained as he failed again and again. "I just can't do it." Finally, just as the spacecraft was about to make another pass into darkness-which would have forced the astronauts...
...posts, and the astronauts toiled for more than an hour in radio silence. It was only when Skylab moved back within range of NASA'S big dish antenna in California's Mojave Desert that Mission Control learned the results. "We got the wing out and locked," reported Conrad. With a tug from the astronauts, the solar wing had swung out perpendicular to the ship and its accordion-like silicon panels were unfolding. However, hydraulic fluid in the panels' spring mechanism had stiffened in the extreme cold, and the panels only partially came out. Yet by week...
Meanwhile, Conrad described to Mission Control exactly why the crucial solar wing had been jammed. The strip of aluminum that obstructed it had been held in place by a single 3/16-in. bolt that had penetrated the solar wing when the shield was ripped off. "One lousy, single bolt," said Conrad incredulously. "Everything else was free...