Men for Moon & Mars

Seven years ago this month, the first seven U.S. astronauts were introduced with fanfare at a Washington press conference. Last week, by contrast, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced its fifth and largest group of spacemen, the 19 appointees were not around to take a bow. If their selection had lost some of its novelty value, their credentials were just as distinguished as those of their predecessors--and their missions would be even farther out.

Class No. 5--bringing to 50 the total roster of active astronauts--is younger and better educated than the original Mercury team (32.8 years v. 34.5; 5.8 years of college v. 4.3). All 19 are seasoned jet pilots. Seven are Air Force officers, six Navymen, two Marines and four civilians. One, Air Force Captain Joe H. Engle, who last June rocketed an X-15 experimental plane to an altitude of 53.1 miles, has already reached the lower fringes of space. Two are Viet Nam veterans: Lieut. Commander Paul J. Weitz, recently returned home after flying 132 combat missions off the carrier Independence, and Lieut. Commander Ronald Evans, who was on duty with the U.S.S. Ticonderoga piloting a Crusader when advised of his selection.

Several have been engaged in space-related scientific research. Air Force Major Edward G. Givens Jr., 36, has been stationed at NASA's Houston headquarters, as project officer for a Buck Rogersish backpack to power space walks. Physicist Don L. Lind, a former Navy airman, helped devise a mechanism for measuring "solar wind"--charged particles that flow through space. Youngest of the lot at 28 is Navy Lieut. Bruce McCandless II, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering at Stanford, whose father won the Medal of Honor aboard the U.S.S. San Francisco off Guadalcanal.

Some of the space fledglings may be assigned to a NASA orbiting laboratory, which is planned for flights of as long as 30 to 90 days sometime in the 1970s. However, the group's 18 to 24 months of exhaustive training will be principally aimed at following up the first manned landings of Americans on the moon. The class will travel to Mexico, Iceland and Alaska to familiarize itself with lunarlike topography. Among Class 5's possible missions: lunar excursions lasting up to a month, using portable living quarters and "moonmobiles," and an as yet undefined program for a manned landing on Mars.

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