Skylab crews named

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32819, 20 January 1972, Page 11

Skylab crews named

/N.Z.P.A.-Rcuter—Copyright) HOUSTON (Texas), January 19. Captains Charles (“Pete”) Conrad and Alan Bean, the astro-, nauts who made man’s second landing on the moon, will command the first and second crews of the Skylab orbiting space station due to be launched in the spring of 1973, it was announced today.

The third and final Skylab crew will be led by a newcomer to space flight, Lieu-tenant-Colonel Gerald Carr.

Captains Conrad and Bean, both Naval officers, are the only men with space flight experience among the nine astronauts who will work in the Skylab over an eightmonth period.

Each crew will consist of a commander, a “science pilot,” and a pilot. The Skylab, built from the Saturn rocket that launches

the moon missions, will be sent up unmanned. The first crew will visit it for 28 days; the second and third, for 56 days. Captain Bean, who is 39, will take along a scientistastronaut, Dr Owen Garriott, aged 41. as science pilot, and

the third member of the crew will be Major Jack Lousma, aged 35, a Marine Corps officer.

Captain Conrad, aged 41, will have as his companions, Dr Joseph Kerwin, aged 39, a physician, and Mr Paul Weitz, aged 39, a former jet pilot and aeronautical engineer.

Colonel Carr, aged 39, the commander of the third crew, is in the United States Marines, and holds a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering. His fellow-crewmen will be a scientist-astronaut, Dr Edward Gibson, aged 35, and Lieutenant-Colonel William Pogue, aged 42, a United States Air Force officer with a master’s degree in mathematics.

Today’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration announcement was probably the last of its kind for four or five years. It leaves 19 astronauts, of a team of 45, who have never been selected to fly in space. Five of them are among the back-up crews named for

Skylab, and could fly if any prime crewmen are dropped, but the other 14 “rookies" have only the space shuttle to look forward to.

That is due to begin by 1980—and by then, many, of them may well be considered too old.