Science: Skylab's Mr. Fixit

To his friends, Astronaut Charles ("Pete") Conrad Jr. is known as "Mr. Fixit." During his youth, his mother recalls, he spent hours with Erector sets, model planes and finally cars and motorcycles. While in quarantine after his Apollo 12 moon-landing, he assembled a complex stereo system. Last week the 43-year-old Navy captain continued to live up to his reputation as Houston's No. 1 amateur mechanic. During a daring and dangerous four-hour walk in space—the longest ever attempted—he and Fellow Astronaut Joseph Kerwin freed Skylab's jammed solar wing, thus probably saving the mission and...