Aug 8 1973
From The Space Library
Spare-time diversions of the astronauts aboard the Orbital Work-shop in the May 25-June 22 Skylab 2 mission and in Skylab 3 since July 28 launch were described in a Christian Science Monitor article. Skylab 3 Astronaut Dr. Owen K. Garriott, the first physicist in space, had been fascinated by the zero-g antics of his spiders Arabella and Anita and his mummichog minnows. Skylab 2 Astronaut Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin had experimented with a big blob of water which floated before him instead of splashing on the spacecraft deck. The blob had taken on the form of the sun and planets as he spun it in space. He had blown it into a bubble with a straw and then had blown bubbles within the bubble. His Skylab 2 colleague, Astronaut Charles Conrad, Jr., had discovered that centrifugal force could impel him around the weightless spacecraft upright if he got himself off to a fast enough start racing around the Workshop. Other astronaut pastimes included "marooning" (doing acrobatics in remote sections of the spacecraft), "hamming it up" for TV and "home movies," reading novels and poetry, ricocheting weightless rubber balls around the laboratory, and flying paper air-planes. (Salisbury, CSM, 8/8/73)
Components of a navigation system similar to that of the lunar roving vehicles launched aboard Apollo 15, 16, and 17 (July 26, 1971, and April 16 and Dec. 7, 1972) to explore the lunar surface had been turned over by Marshall Space Flight Center to the Univ. of Kentucky for possible incorporation into a remotely controlled mine-surveillance vehicle, the Marshall Star announced. (Marshall Star, 8/8/73, 2)
A New York Times editorial noted that "works aimed at exploring the planets by instruments of the most diverse sort" continued activity after the close of manned exploration of the moon. It commented on the discovery by Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists that the Venus equatorial area was dominated by huge craters [see Aug. 5]. (NYT, 8/8/73, 32)
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