ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 27, 1996 TAG: 9609270067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.
SOURCE: Associated Press
SHE WALKED OFF the shuttle, a real feat for someone who's been weightless for six months.
Astronaut Shannon Lucid, NASA's space superwoman, returned to Earth Thursday after six debilitating months of weightlessness and, to everyone's amazement, walked off the shuttle Atlantis.
Doctors had met her inside the space shuttle with a stretcher, figuring the 53-year-old biochemist would be too weak and wobbly to stand, let alone walk. But she surprised them, insisting, ``I can stand up.''
Two workers assisted her during the short walk onto an airport-style moving sidewalk and into a reclining chair.
After a record-shattering 188 days in space - most of that time aboard the Russian space station Mir - she was thrilled to be home.
``We could hear her laughing all the way up to the flight deck, I'll tell you, she was just so tickled,'' said Atlantis' commander, William Readdy.
``It was just a great mission and I just had a great time,'' said Lucid, who rocketed away in March and spent a longer stretch in space than any other American and any other woman.
Lucid was welcomed back to Earth with a 10-pound box of red, white and blue M&M's from President Clinton and an offer for 188 cases of potato chips - one for every day she spent in orbit. She had craved both while living aboard Mir.
Clinton called from the Oval Office to congratulate her. ``I couldn't believe you walked off the shuttle,'' he said.
Lucid, who traveled 75 million miles and circled the Earth 3,008 times, faces weeks of rehabilitation to recover from the effects of prolonged weightlessness, which include weak muscles, fatigue, vertigo, anemia and deteriorating bones. She could be dragging for months to come.
Unaccustomed to the pull of gravity, she said she felt heavy, but noted that was normal. She also was wobbly, almost falling over when she got up from a chair at NASA's crew quarters. She grabbed onto a table to steady herself.
``It will take just a little bit to get fully adapted back to living in one G [gravity] again,'' Lucid said.
Lucid was taken to the crew quarters building for a battery of medical tests. She was reunited there with her husband, Michael, and their three children, all in their 20s.
She had fruit juice and a soft drink, but a shower - her first in six months - had to wait until the most pressing tests were completed.
Lucid was replaced aboard Mir by NASA astronaut John Blaha, 54, a retired Air Force colonel who will spend the next four months living on the orbiting outpost with two Russian cosmonauts.
Lucid got her first taste of Earth's gravity in six months when Atlantis touched down at Cape Canaveral in the morning. Beaming, she gave a thumbs-up and shook hands with astronaut Carl Walz seated beside her.
``She was like a space superwoman,'' Walz said.
Lucid will make the final leg of her journey, back home to Houston, today. Clinton promised to meet her there.
``You've given us all a great deal to be proud of and a lot of thrills, and we're glad you're home safe and sound,'' the president said.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Shannon Lucid talks with President Clinton, who sentby CNBher a 10-pound box of red, white and blue M&M's.