Word: splashdown
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There were no speeches, no red carpets, and the Navy band played for only about a minute. After their splashdown on target in the Pacific 225 miles southwest of San 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...
...Skylab-left the ferry craft with part of its attitude control system not working. For several nerve-racking hours last week, NASA officials contemplated bringing the second crew of Skylab astronauts home immediately, lest any further deterioration in the Apollo rocket control system jeopardize their chances of a safe splashdown. By week's end the space agency had settled on a different course. For the time being at least, the Skylab team would be allowed to continue its record-breaking 59-day mission. As a safeguard, however, round-the-clock work was ordered at Cape Kennedy to prepare another...
...meeting with the press, the astronauts were enthusiastic about their experience in space. "It was a continuous and pleasant surprise how easy it was to live in zero-gravity, and how well you feel," said Kerwin, who attributed his own "dizziness" after splashdown to simple seasickness. Added Conrad: "I'd say very definitely that the average man or woman could fly in space." The only major change urged by the astronauts for future missions is an increase in the daily program of exercises from 30 minutes to perhaps an hour and a half to help maintain muscle tone...
After spending a record 28 days 50 minutes in space, Skylab Astronauts Pete Conrad, Joe Kerwin and Paul Weitz came home last week. They made a perfect splashdown in the Pacific some 830 miles southwest of San Diego. As the Apollo command ship bobbed gently in the rolling seas 6½ miles off the bow of the recovery ship Ticonderoga, Conrad radioed a message: "Everybody here is in super shape." Indeed, it was a flawless finish to a successful mission that only four weeks earlier had seemed doomed to failure...
...their splashdown, the astronauts held a press conference in space, answering newsmen's questions , relayed to them by Mission Control. How did they feel about the decision to end the Apollo program and manned exploration of the moon? Cernan was outspoken, calling it "an abnormal restraint of man's intellect at this point in time." Next day, however, Richard Nixon had some reassuring words for the astronauts and NASA: "The making of space history will continue, and this nation means to play a major role in its making...The more we look back the more we are reminded...