Taking the inquires--which friends were quick to tell him about--as a sign that he was still in the running. Hoffman held his breath until the call finally came. With the phone call came the move to Houston.

Difficult as the application process was, it was easy compared with NASA's basic training Hoffman says that much of the year he spent as an astronaut candidate "was like going back to school," with courses ranging from aeronautics to astronauts

One aspect of the training which the astronauts both enjoy and dread is floating aboard a specially padded plane that is flown in parabolic curves to simulate weightlessness. The astronauts have nicknamed the plane the "Vomit Comet," evidently for good reason.

"It's as much fun as it looks, but you can really get sick as hell." Hoffman says about the "physiological familiarity" tests conducted aboard the plane.

Life as an astronaut, however, is not all fun and games. "Basically, what you do around here is on-the-job training." Hoffman says, explaining that most astronauts spend their time helping to develop new equipment or computer software for the shuttle, using simulations or working with contractors and scientists directly. The end goal is attaining a thorough understanding of how the space shuttle operates Because astronauts may spend as much as a year dealing with one particular system, each man tends to develop an area or two of expertise Hoffman has written a training manual on the Orbital Maneuvering System, which is one component of a complex guidance system that helps to control and steer the shuttle in orbit

Although Hoffman is not yet scheduled on a shuttle flight, he hopes to be selected soon for a mission sometime in 1984 In the meantime, Hoffman continues training and testing while performing more specific tasks for each shuttle flight.

During the fifth flight, Hoffman served as a member of the two man support crew, a plum job which put Hoffman as close to the job as he could be Over the past year, as Columbia's most recent veterans trained intensively for their mission chores. Hoffman helped to work out the flight procedures while assisting the crew with simulations and other training As a result of his close work with the four astronauts. Hoffman became "as good a person as anyone else to know what's going on," and stood ready in Mission Control over the course of the five-day flight in case controllers had any questions

"I feel a lot of me flying up there with them." Hoffman said in a telephone interview the night before last Thursday's march. He added that he had had dinner with the astronauts just prior to their departure for the Cape Canaveral. Fla,. launch site.

On the fourth flight, Hoffman served as a media representative for NASA, helping to explain the shuttle program on CBS and National Public Radio. Over the past few years, NASA has also sent Hoffman on speaking tours of public schools

While most of the training and the work is enjoyable, there is also "a lot of tedium, boredom, and frustration." Hoffman admits, saying that he often spends about three-quarters of a day in meetings. "We don't sit around in our spacesuits all the time," he quips.

"People ought to realize it is a job, but it is an incredibly exciting one--after all, we are preparing for space flight. When things get frustrating, you've got to sit back and look at the big picture again."

Waiting for a flight is easier today than it was before the shuttle program. When flights were few and astronauts trained several years for each flight, Hoffman explains, telling of astronauts selected in 1967 who have been waiting for 15 years to fly in space.

"Now, there are going to be plenty of flights for everyone," he adds, saying that the astronauts selected with him in 1978 are just starting to be selected for crews. Sally K. Ride, one of six women selected in 1978, will fly on the seventh mission next April, becoming the first American woman to go into space.

Invitably in the course of media coverage of this shuttle, the focus shifts to Tum Wolfe's The Right Stuff, a compelling description of the early astronauts, their legacy as true pioneers, men and men only--who scraped the edges of space in a variety of sleek rocket planes and flying contraption. Today, Hoffman notes, the astronaut corps is comprised of people of all backgrounds. His group includes the first three Blacks and an Oriental. Hoffman, himself is one of the first Jewish astronauts.

The one thing common to all the astronauts. Hoffman says, is the fact that they are all pushing towards the same end, and would like to stay alive in the process. "There's no right stuff, in the test pilot kind of way, but we all get an appreciation of what it's like to work with a very complicated vehicle in a basically unforgiving environment."