Astronaut Paul Weitz Dies At 85; Veteran of Skylab and Shuttle Missions

NPR reports the death of NASA astronaut Paul Weitz, who spent nearly a month in orbit on the first manned Skylab mission in 1973 and flew a decade later as mission commander on the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Challenger. He was 85. From the report: Weitz died in Flagstaff, Ariz., on Monday; he had been diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of blood cancer. Weitz was born in Erie, Pa., and graduated from Penn State. He joined the Navy and became an aviator and test pilot, eventually rising to the rank of captain. He was chosen in NASA's fifth round of astronaut selection in 1966, as the agency was ramping up for the Apollo moon program. On his first space flight, he served as pilot on Skylab-2 (SL-2), along with Apollo 12 veteran Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr., and Joseph Kerwin, also a rookie on SL-2. The mission to fix Skylab, which had suffered significant damage during the space station's launch, is still considered one of the most difficult and dangerous in the annals of spaceflight. The three astronauts had to conduct multiple space walks to repair the damaged craft, deploying a giant reflective parasol to act as a sunshade in place of a damaged thermal shield. Weitz logged two hours and 11 minutes in space walks and the crew of the mission established a new world record for time in space -- 672 hours, 49 minutes.

Comments

Re: Space Pioneer

[rmdingler]

Someone dies at 85 and we are sure itâ(TM)s radiation?? How about not believing things until you study it scientifically? Nowadays a moron with no qualifications in science considers their own speculative opinion more valid than that of a doctor with a PhD in the field.

I'm completely certain a poster with the intellect necessary to understand it may not be that the cancer he suffered was necessarily a direct result of his radiation exposure, is, also, intellectual enough to understand that it is plausible his mission in the 70's, an era of the pioneer of hominids in space, was rife with poorly understood effects of radiation on space-walkers.