Word: payloads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Because the early hours in orbit are critical in judging human reaction to weightlessness, the scientist-astronauts got a fast start on their biomedical program. They took blood samples from one another (Payload Specialist Byron Lichtenberg, as the chief bloodletter, became known as "the vampire"), underwent eye tests, lifted steel balls, were flung around in a sledlike contraption called a body-restraint system, and even endured electric shocks. Not surprisingly, the orbital guinea pigs complained that the tests were making them ill, although the torture had a medical purpose: to learn more about the nausea, headaches and general lethargy, known...
Monitoring the experiments is a new breed of scientist-astronauts called payload specialists. On Spacelab's maiden voyage, they are Ulf Merbold, 42, a West German physicist whose specialty is the behavior of materials at low temperatures, and Byron Lichtenberg, 35, a biomedical engineer from M.I.T. and Brown University with a particular interest in solving the problem of motion sickness that has afflicted so many astronauts...
...specialist in ionospheric physics who spent 59½ days aboard Skylab, and Astronomer Robert Parker, 46, who was a member of the support crews for Apollo 15 and 17. Both are so-called mission specialists: These are career astronauts who concentrate on science rather than flying. By contrast, payload specialists are hired only for a particular mission. In either case, all the crew members will earn their salary (astronaut pay starts at $24,500 a year and goes to more than $50,000) since this is the first flight in which someone will always be on duty. Tours will...
Airlines have been slow to go for radar. The sets are expensive and cut payload. But this week the Peruvian International Airways started the first regularly scheduled passenger service (between New York and Santiago, Chile) completely safeguarded by radar. P.I.A.'s radars (made by General Electric) weigh 150 lbs. in all, but show a clear map of the country below. The pilot knows where he is-and where the obstacles are-in all weathers...
...shuttle's second day aloft, while orbiting 185 miles above the Pacific, the crew set Insat-1B spinning outside the open doors of the shuttle's payload bay. The satellite spun near by in space for 45 minutes, then, reflecting the sun's rays like a giant shiny ice cube, it flawlessly began its week-long climb to an altitude of 22,300 miles, propelled by its own rocket boosters. "The deployment was on time, and the satellite looks good," reported Mission Specialist Guion S. Bluford Jr., an aerospace engineer and veteran Air Force pilot...