Word: gyros
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...program it is called the "Giant Gyrating Gyro-Wheel," and that is probably as good a name as any for the contraption. Two or three times a day at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, where the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus has settled in for its spring visit, a British-born performer named Elvin Bale approaches the device, unlimbers its 40-ft. arms and sets both himself and the great wheel into motion. Thus begins what Ringling Impresario Irvin Feld says is "one of the most fantastic thrill acts the show has ever...
...once, circus hyperbole comes close to fact. At one end of the Gyro-Wheel's arms is a heavy counterweight; at the other is a circular wire-mesh cage 8 ft. in diameter. Bale and his wife Jeanette give the cage a mighty push. As it begins to turn, Bale hops inside, then makes like a hamster in an exercise wheel. As the cage rises, he runs up the inside to help maintain speed. When it reaches the top, Bale backpedals frantically to slow the whooshing descent, reversing again at the bottom to propel himself around the loop once...
Bale's Gyro-Wheel act is not his only scary turn. At another point in the show, he dives headfirst off a swinging trapeze bar and then catches himself, at the last moment, by his heels. That stunt gives even Bale bad dreams. "The heel is the last point of your body," he says. "You can't catch yourself if you fall. Sometimes I wake up at night dreaming I have just missed the bar." On these occasions, adds Jeanette, "he almost knocks me out of bed, grabbing at things...
After an indifferent start, the Skylab mission was also sailing smoothly. The astronauts had recovered from a bout of space sickness and were learning to live with a balky gyroscope, one of the three essential for maneuvering and maintaining the stability of the ship. One gyro had already broken down, and failure of a second might force curtailment of the mission. But as long as it continued to function, the astronauts had a steady platform in the sky; they made good use of it by photographing everything from simmering volcanoes on earth to giant storms...
...second team should find the lab in good working order. As the countdown began last week, the only potentially serious problem reported by mission controllers was a malfunction in an attitude-control gyroscope, the second to break down so far (seven of Skylab's complement of nine gyros in the triply-redundant system are still working). The astronauts will carry up a replacement gyro. Already on board is a twin-pole awning. It is designed to replace the makeshift sunshade erected by the first crew to protect the orbital workshop's bare spot where it lost its thermal...