Space: Knocking On Heaven's Gate

An astronaut describes life in space

Physicist Joseph P. Allen, one of five crew members aboard the space shuttle Discovery, made his maiden voyage into space two years ago. An astronaut since 1967, he took the fifth flight of the shuttle Columbia. Back on terra firma, Allen collaborated with Writer Russell Martin on a book, Entering Space, published this month (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; $24.95). Illustrated with scores of photographs, a few of which appear here, Entering Space is a knowing and scrupulously detailed account of the most ambitious American adventures aloft. It gives a sense of the prosaic minutiae and the dumb-struck wonder of traveling through space. Some excerpts:

> "The veteran of zero gravity moves effortlessly and with total control... In contrast, the rookies sail across the same path, usually too fast, trying to suppress the instinct to glide headfirst and with vague swimming motions. They stop by bumping the far wall in precisely the wrong position ... they twist around too rapidly, knocking loose cameras, film magazines, food packages and checklists."

> "Even though still attached by the thin tether, the astronauts can release their handholds and drift free, out of reach of the orbiter's gunwales. They can literally become human satellites, a thought that is both thrilling and somewhat sobering."

> "The easiest way for an astronaut to find the earth in the darkness is to search for a disappearance of stars, to look for the curve of blackness seemingly cut out of the heavens. That blackness, that absence even of starlight, is the round and solid earth looming only 200 miles away."

> "For the three crew members seated on the flight deck ... the first real indicator of the orbiter's reentrance into the atmosphere is the quivering needle of the G-meter. For days, the needle has been fixed at zero, as if it were painted on the dial. Now it shudders to life and slowly begin to rise. Then there is an unmistakable whisper of rushing air, at first almost too faint to hear, then louder and louder still A faint red glow appears at the edges of the cockpit windows, then spreads across them and seems to curl up over the fuselage ... As it slows and the air no longer supports its raised nose, the forward landing gear falls with a jarring whump ... A spaceship has landed on earth."