Up, up, and away...

Press, 17 November 1976, Page 25

Up, up, and away...

“All aboard for space ... All aboard for space.” That cry, which once had a place only in science fiction, may well be heard at the Cape Kennedy Space Centre in the early 1980 s, as applications are already being taken for journeys on the halfrocket, half-plane “space shuttle.” Seven thousand people have sent in for applications for the trip. Several hundred have completed the documents, giving details of their health and scientific training, according to Houston Space Centre. Thirty or 40 people for the first trips will be picked by next July. They will be the pilots to go on the first shuttle trips, which will carry satellites and experimental equipment, then return to earth, “We have closed the

book of science fiction and have reached a point of pragmatically assessing the uses of outer space for all the people of the world,” says James C. Fletcher, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. George Abbey, head of flight operations for the shuttle programme, says that after picking crews for the first flights, his office will start considering applications from people who want to go aloft for experimental projects. Room in the towering, snub-nosed shuttle orbiter will be let to foreign governments, universities, and corporations which want to conduct tests in outer space. Factories may even be set up in space to take advantage of the weightlessness and the vacuum there to manufacture ball bearings and medicines.

Mr Abbey says that people selected for the seven to 30-day trips will have to put in about three months training at the space centre. Once aboard they will have to wait patiently for several hours while their shuttle prepares to rocket aloft. ’“They will certainly feel the launch,” Mr Abbey says, “but it won’t be much more severe than a take-off in a jet aircraft. And landing will be almost the same as touching down in a jet.” And the days when astronauts squeezed their food out of toothpaste tubes are long since passed. “These space travellers will get hot meals. We even expect to serve ice cream.” With most of the space shuttle flights expected to orbit at from 150 miles to several hundred miles up, space travellers will get a spectacular view of the

continents and oceans beneath. Recent experiments with Skylab show they adjust easily to weightlessness and will have little trouble readjusting to earth after such a short trip. No age limit has been set for passengers making the journey. Work on preparing the shuttle for its first test flights is now going ahead fast in California, where the first orbiter vehicle was rolled ceremoniously from its hangar in September. Under construction since June 1974, the space shuttle will, in mid--1977, be carried aloft piggy-back aboard a giant Boeing 747 specially converted to be its carrier. Once aloft, the shuttle will separate and glide down on to the flat saltbeds of Edwards Air Force Base to make test landings.