Word: salyut
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...erratic engines and, on this last mission, the exasperating and puzzling $32 million loss of two jettisoned solid-propellant boosters that sank into the Atlantic Ocean, the shuttle remains a unique vehicle, an emblem of national technological excellence unlike anything in the Soviet space arsenal. That would include their Salyut 7 space station, which was pointedly visited by three cosmonauts, one of them a Frenchman, while Columbia circled the earth several hundred miles below it. As Reagan noted, the space shuttle shows the world that "Americans still have the know-how and Americans still have the true grit that conquered...
...space scientists, the crucial question is what happened to Kovalyonok's heart-and the rest of his body-during his long stay in space. Sixteen teams of cosmonauts-including a Cuban, a Rumanian and other East bloc visitors-had docked with Salyut since September 1977, and all proclaimed themselves hale and hearty upon return. But if there was one major lesson from Salyut for both the Soviets and NASA, it is that, during extended spaceflights, the human body may be the most delicate machine...
Though images of cosmonauts and astronauts tumbling and frolicking in weightlessness suggest that the living is easy, Salyut showed that the body undergoes radical changes when freed from the influence of gravity. Some changes are so severe that they could imperil the lives of long-term space voyagers once they return to earth. Many observers of the U.S. space program, including scientists within NASA, feel that in contrast to the Soviets, the U.S. space agency has paid far too little attention to what happens to the human body during long periods in orbit...
From the very start of the missions, the remarkable effects of zero-g became apparent to Soviet doctors. Life aboard Salyut proved far from salutary. In spite of prolonged training on the ground, many of the cosmonauts could not hold their food down in the early days of a flight. Some had trouble getting to sleep, and were often awakened by the spacecraft's clattering and creaking. Others complained of fatigue and vertigo. In a revealing new book, Red Star in Orbit (Random House; $12.95), James Oberg offers some trenchant quotes from the flight diary of Salyut Cosmonaut Valeri...
Living aboard Salyut brought other hazards. In 1977, when Cosmonaut Georgi Grechko took a "space walk" outside the ship to look for some suspected damage, he suddenly saw his companion, Yuri Romanenko, drifting by. Romanenko, untethered to the spacecraft, had accidentally floated out of the cabin. Grechko caught Romanenko just as he was about to spin off into the void. On another flight, cosmonauts complained of repeated headaches. It turned out carbon dioxide was building up to dangerous levels in the cabin. The problem was solved by changing the air purifiers more often...