Things Can Be Stressful When They’re Out to Launch

-America’s astronauts may be professionally cool, but they are hardly immune to anxiety and stress as they rocket into space to perform tedious, tiring and often risky chores, a couple of them told senators. On the other hand, said astronaut Anna Fisher flying the space shuttle “is really very much like a camping trip in terms of livability.” Five astronauts from last November’s much-publicized, satellite-rescuing shuttle flight were touring Capitol Hill. The group showed the Senate’s science, technology and space subcommittee slides and a movie of the mission during which they launched two satellites and retrieved two others from useless orbits in the first orbital salvage operation. But no one spoke of fear-except Sen. John C. Danforth (R.-Mo.), who maintained that he pleads with his children not to make him get on carnival Ferris wheels.