Gurgle, Gurgle
Like Rhea Seddon, woman astronaut Shannon Lucid has some not-so-fond memories of the water-torture training in Florida. "Their favorite trick, " she recalled, " was to ask you a question just before they cut you loose - so that you'd have your mouth wide open when you hit the water."

With Pointed Ears?
When Lucid was chosen for Shuttle astronaut-scientist training, her husband Michael had trouble explaining it all to their three small children. Finally came an inspiration. "Your mommy, " he said," might be like Mr. Spock in "Star Trek""

Yearning to Go
A bit heavier now, his hair a little thinner, his reflexes and eyesight a little less sharp, Neil Armstrong was only half joking when he said he's ready for another space flight. After all he said, "They take people with glasses now."

Speed Record
Returning from a trip to Antarctica some years ago, Wernher von Braun, Ernst Stuhlinger, and other space scientists proudly showed pictures of themselves merrily running around a marker in the snow at the exact geographic South Pole. Stuhlinger explained: "We were setting a space speed record - orbiting the Earth every ten seconds.

Budget Squeze
Lamenting the latest curtailment of NASA funds in a talk at a Southern Governors Conference, von Braun cracked:
"The budget cuts have been so severe that we bare even having to tighten the Van Allen radiation belt that surrounds Earth!"

Help Wanted
And another observer of the multibillion-dollar space effort figured in this way: "If God wanted us to explore space He'd have given us money."

Numbers Game
The thirty-five men and women selected in 1978 as future Shuttle astronauts may have been the largest single group ever chosen, and newly arrived on the space scene, but they were a proud bunch. They even came up with their own distinctive patch. It bore the legend "TFNG. " That was shorthand for Thirty-Five New Guys.

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