Word: skylab
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...million miles. (That record-breaking performance contrasted sharply with the current manned space efforts of the Soviets, who last week launched two cosmonauts, Vasily Lazarev, 45, and Oleg Makarov, 40, on a two-day orbital mission.) Regularly putting in 12-to 16-hour days despite their initial nausea, the Skylab 2 astronauts accomplished nearly twice as much scientific work as planned. They took over 100,000 pictures of the sun, earth and stars, collected enough data on the earth to cover 18 miles of magnetic tape, and performed so many other technical and biomedical experiments that scientists will be kept...
...Diego last week, the three astronauts were whisked to the deck of the recovery carrier New Orleans. Then, wobbly but smiling, they were guided by NASA doctors a few steps to waiting chairs and quickly carted off atop a moving platform for medical examinations. The return of Skylab 2 Astronauts Alan Bean, Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott was in fact so subdued compared with past homecomings that it did not begin to do justice to their remarkable accomplishment: they had just completed man's longest voyage in space...
...Skylab astronauts completed their 43rd day in space at week's end, they were still healthy and cheerful. Officials were elated. If the astronauts remained in good health and readjusted well to the earth's gravity on their return, said NASA Administrator James Fletcher, then "we've come a long way" toward proving that man can physically endure even the projected two-year Mars mission. But one group of experts remained doubtful about the prospects for longer manned flights. They were NASA's Navy consultants, who have spent years studying the psychological effects of lengthy confinement...
Shrimp Noises. Even in a craft as large as Skylab, the Navy consultants say, astronauts feel the same "stimulus impoverishment" as submariners. Consciously and unconsciously, they miss such familiar sights as trees, animals and sunrises. "There is nothing that lives or grows," says Submarine Medical Officer William Tansey. "It is all flashing lights, air conditioning and bells. You lose your grasp on the real world." One result aboard submarines on long missions is that sailors vie for space in the sonar room to hear the mating calls of whales or swimming noises of shrimp...
Between trips to Mexico, Haiti and Maine, he spent most of his time on Martha's Vineyard, reading, sailing and staying away from the news-although he could not resist tuning in some of the Watergate hearings and the Skylab coverage. Watching surrogates sitting in for him, had he not thought, "They're doing it all wrong?" An unexpected reply: "Not at all. I look at others and think they do a much better job on the air. I look at my tapes and shudder." Television's institutional anchorman shuddering at his own work? "I guess...