Acrobats in Orbit

As Apollo 7 whirled through orbit after orbit around the earth last week, the growing monotony of the mission was a major measure of its success. Presented with little challenge from the well-functioning spacecraft, Astronauts Wally Schirra, Walter Cunningham and Donn Eisele fought off ennui as they plodded through the humdrum housekeeping and engineering duties necessary to prove their craft moonworthy. They fired and refired the ship's big rocket engine and practiced sighting stars through a sextant; they tested their computers and cooling system, and transmitted to a ground station the same sort of signals a lunar module would send while returning from the surface of the moon. For astronauts and space watchers alike, the high points of the week were the television shows, shot with the 41-lb slow-scan TV camera developed for Apollo by RCA.

The daily 7-min. to 11-min. Wally, Walt and Donn Show, as it was nicknamed, was scheduled once each morning during a 2,000-mile Apollo pass between Corpus Christi, Texas, and Cape Kennedy, the only two ground stations equipped to pick up the transmissions. The astronauts held up crudely lettered signs that read "Hello from the lovely Apollo Room, high atop everything" and "Deke Slayton, are you a turtle?" In accordance with a bar room tradition that has been adopted by the astronauts, Slayton was required to answer "You bet your sweet ass I am" --or pay the penalty of buying a drink for everyone within earshot. "I have recorded my answer," responded Slayton from the control center, after momentarily switching off his microphone. On one show, Astronauts Schirra and Cunningham suddenly floated up from behind their seats and swam toward the camera, vividly demonstrating the weightlessness of space flight.

The astronauts also shot some scenes from the spacecraft windows, catching glimpses of clouds and coastlines racing by. They panned Apollo's interior as they described equipment; they demonstrated how loose drops of water are collected with a vacuum hose and how water is added to their dehydrated food.

As the flight continued without serious problems, an air of heady optimism began to pervade the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Said NASA's Christopher Kraft: "The performance of the vehicle to date has been very close to perfect." At week's end, officials were hinting that if Apollo 7 continued to perform faultlessly all the way through its splashdown this week, the planned lunar-orbital mission of Apollo 8 might well be advanced by two weeks, to Dec. 5.

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