Word: skylab
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While coping successfully with one crisis after another during their 28-day stay in space, Skylab 1 Astronauts Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz and Joe Kerwin still had time to act like ordinary tourists. Clicking away with their Nikons, Hasselblads and automatic cameras, they took 50,000 pictures -more than any space travelers before them. Last week, as they returned to Houston for continued postflight medical examinations and debriefings, NASA began releasing their splendid shots, some of the best ever taken in space...
...pictures ranged from those of the astronauts engaged in everyday activities inside their cavernous spacecraft -showering, eating and undergoing medical tests in zero-G -to dramatic exterior views of Skylab itself. One particularly stunning photograph, taken from the Apollo command ship after the astronauts left Skylab, shows the 80-ton space station circling the cloud-covered earth. The makeshift sunshade, erected by the astronauts after the loss of the original shielding during launch, and the single surviving solar wing on the orbital workshop section are clearly visible. The photographs also offer a close-up view of the damaged equipment, including...
Back in Houston, the Skylab 1 astronauts found that their own mission was far from over. They were allowed to meet only with a limited number of officials (who wore face masks in their presence). They also had to continue eating the same regimen of frozen, canned and dehydrated foods that they had aboard Skylab. Though they were allowed to go home to their wives in the evenings, their children had to move away from home temporarily. The 18 days of semi-isolation were ordered by doctors to shield the astronauts from the effects of earthly germs; any chance infection...
...astronauts balked at the orders of NASA doctors and did not wear face masks. "If we catch a cold," joked Conrad, "it would be an honor to catch a cold from you two gentlemen." Brezhnev joined in the banter by asking Conrad to take the two leaders up to Skylab. Nixon cheerfully nodded his assent...
Like their predecessors in space, the Skylab astronauts did experience some weakening of their heart and other muscles, caused by 28 days of weightlessness. While most of the Apollo astronauts recovered their strength about 48 hours after their trips to the moon (which averaged about eleven days), the Skylab crew-notably Physician-Astronaut Kerwin -took a few days longer. But doctors said that the delay was expectable. "They are in better condition than we had hoped for," reported Cardiologist Robert L. Johnson...