Word: worden
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...several chilling minutes last week, millions of television viewers wondered if Astronauts Dave Scott, Jim Irwin and Al Worden were going to make it safety back to earth. As the command module Endeavour came into sight high above the fluffy clouds over the Pacific, it became apparent that one of its three big orange-and-white chutes was fouled and thus not supporting its share of the load. Dropping into the calm seas 300 miles north of Hawaii several feet per second faster than planned, the moonship created a mighty splash. But despite the jolting landing the astronauts were safely...
Later, on the homeward voyage, Worden conducted a more esoteric experiment. Pointing his instruments at X-ray sources far out in the galaxy, he recorded the emissions for clues that might be used to confirm the existence of "black holes"-weird, theorized remnants of huge, collapsed stars. He also awed earthlings-including his two daughters-by taking a televised 18-min. walk in deep space some 200,000 miles from earth to retrieve the exposed film cassettes from the service module's cameras...
...back side of the moon, Scott reported: "Houston, we did not get a separation." Falcon and Endeavour were still tightly latched together. Again the wizards in Mission Control solved the problem: telemetry showed that two electrical plugs had not properly connected, and therefore separation could not be accomplished. Worden closed the circuit, and Falcon at last was free...
...another memento of Apollo 15's visit. With the press of a button, the small, instrument-packed subsatellite will be automatically injected into an orbit around the moon. The tiny package should swing around the moon for more than a year, radioing vital data about the lunar environment. Then Worden was scheduled to climb out-side the spacecraft, edge his way back to SIM and retrieve his valuable film in history's first "walk"' in deep space 200,000 miles from earth. Finally, twelve days after the start of their journey from Cape Kennedy, the astronauts will splash down...
MAJOR ALFRED M. WORDEN, 39, the Command-module pilot, is the crew's freest spirit. He likes good food and drink, plays his baby grand piano for visitors to his bachelor flat (everything from Beethoven to bop) and sleeps in a bed topped with a canopy of aluminum reflectors. "It gets me up in the morning," Worden explains. "I can't stand looking at all those ugly faces." Born in Jackson, Mich., Worden graduated from West Point in 1955, switched to the Air Force and later took a master's degree in astronautical and aeronautical engineering...