Word: skylab
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Spacelab was built in West Germany under the auspices of the eleven-member European Space Agency (ESA). Packed with everything from computers to miniature automated factories, it is a major advance over Skylab, the U.S.'s first scientific work station in orbit, which was occupied by three successive teams of astronauts in the early 1970s. Spacelab is also considerably more sophisticated than the current Salyut 7, which the Soviets hint may be the first building block of a larger orbital station. Spacelab's uniqueness lies in the versatility of its three major components: 1) two cylindrically shaped laboratories...
Rounding out the crew will be Owen Garriott, 53, a 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...
Paul Weitz, 50, crew member on the 1973 Skylab mission and commander of the first Challenger voyage last April, on the early astronauts' descriptions of the earth as "a beautiful blue marble": "It was blue in the beginning, and now it's a gray planet. What's the message? We are fouling our nest...
...syndrome" (SAS), was recognized only a decade ago. Says former Astronaut Mike Collins: "We didn't have much of a problem with space sickness as long as we were strapped in Mercury and Gemini. Same for the Russians. It's when we all began floating around in Skylab and the Russians in Salyut that the guys began getting sick...
While the rest of the world anxiously watched and waited, the Soviets struggled last week to keep one of their spy satellites from plunging prematurely and dangerously back to earth. The high drama was reminiscent of NASA's unsuccessful attempt to control the fall of Skylab four years ago, when fragments of the unmanned U.S. space station harmlessly hit the Australian outback. But the problem with the Soviet satellite had a particularly frightening element. Aboard the faltering Red star was some lethal cargo: a miniature nuclear power plant that could spray deadly radioactive material over a wide swath...