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By Broward Liston

 
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 31 (Reuters) - For NASA astronaut Jerry Ross, who this week will become the first person to leave the planet a record seventh time, space flight is getting to be like a regular job.

On six previous missions he has deployed satellites, made seven spacewalks, done classified military work and visited two space stations, both Mir and the International Space Station.

Since 1998, when he flew on the first construction job to the International Space Station, Ross has shared the space-flight record with four other Americans.

On Thursday, when he returns to that far flung outpost to install the first "railway in space," the record will become his outright -- not that he counts on keeping it forever.

"We aren't doing our job right if we limit the number of times people can go fly in space. What we're trying to do is find a routine and safe way to do it and find reasons to do it," said the 59-year-old Ross, a retired Army colonel and unabashed booster of the controversial space-tourism industry.

"I'm hoping that my granddaughters will have a chance to go fly in space many times, and I'm hoping they'll take me with them."

Ross is hardly the household name that pioneers like Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong have become. But Gagarin flew just once, Glenn and Armstrong twice. Any of them might envy Ross, who after Thursday's launch is also due to set a new record for time outside his spacecraft during the two spacewalks planned for him this trip.

The shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven is to deliver a new segment to the space station, a cooperative effort of U.S., Russian, Canadian, European and Japanese space agencies.

The 30-foot (nine-metre) S-zero Truss is the centerpiece of a $600 million truss that will grow to 360 feet (109 metres) as new segments are added and will eventually support much of the station's infrastructure. NASA calls it the backbone of the station.

NOVEL FEATURES

Among its novel features will be a rail system that will move the station's large robot arm, riding atop a contraption that is part locomotive, part flat car, from one end of the truss to the other to aid in future construction.

There will also be a handcart for spacewalking astronauts to cut their commute time from air lock to worksite.

Robotics and spacewalks are the primary tools for building the space station, but when Ross joined the astronaut corps in 1980, a year before the first space shuttle flew, NASA was ready to leave spacewalks in the drawer marked history, alongside splashdowns and the moon race.

"Literally, when I got here, we hadn't intended to do any spacewalks from the space shuttle; it was only to be an emergency or contingency capability," Ross said recently.

He said the concern was that an astronaut outside the safety of a shuttle was "one failure away from certain death."

Ross will make his eighth and ninth spacewalks on this mission. In previous sojourns he spent almost two full days outside his spacecraft.

In another first, Ross will team with astronaut Lee Morin for two spacewalks, and it will be the first time two grandfathers have worked together outside. Crewmates dubbed them the "Silver Team."

Ross made his first trip into space a month before the Challenger disaster killed seven astronauts. In the nearly three-year hiatus that followed, NASA lost many of its most experienced astronauts. Ross played a pivotal role in rebuilding the corps, colleagues said.

An engineer and mechanic, he developed many of the tools and skills used in assembling the space station 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

Three of the seven astronauts on this mission will be rookies and mission commander Mike Bloomfield, making his third trip aloft, said he designed the mission and training schedule so that Ross can spend time with each new crew member.

"The success of this flight is going to be determined a lot by how well the rookies do. I told Jerry this early on, I wanted him to take all the rookies under his arm and try to infuse those six flights of experience into each of their brains," Bloomfield said.

10:59 03-31-02

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