Atlantic Ocean.
In preparation for manned space flight, NASA experimented with animals. The first passengers were pigs, who were strapped inside Mercury capsules and dropped from high altitudes to test the spacecraft’s impact resistance. The porkers emerged from the exercise with only mild injuries, which humorously validated the claims of many veteran test pilots—astronauts really were just “Spam in a Can.”
On May 29, 1959, NASA launched an Army Jupiter missile transporting Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a South American squirrel monkey, into space. Both monkeys wore electrodes to measure their physiological responses to weightlessness and G-forces during the 300-mile-high flight. After splash down, the rocket’s passenger compartment was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, where both passengers were found tucked away, safe and sound.
The next space explorers were chimpanzees, who were selected because their reaction times were nearly identical to those of human beings. A group of 40 chimps housed at New Mexico’s Holloman Aerospace Medical Center were trained for space flight. On January 21, 1961, six of the astrochimps, along with 20 handlers and medical specialists, travelled from New Mexico to Cape Canaveral, in preparation for the first test launches. The now impatient Mercury astronauts questioned the need for further test flights; a disgusted Alan Shepard expressed hope that the next launch would result in a “chimp barbecue.”
On January 31, 1961, ape number 61, nicknamed Ham, an acronym for Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, was launched into space. Strapped in a cockpit seat within a plastic pressure chamber the size of a trunk (designed to simulate conditions inside a spacesuit), Ham endured the 16-minute, 39-second flight, sustaining only a minor injury—a bruised nose that occurred during lift-off or splash down.
Ham’s flight was not without misadventure. When the spacecraft’s retrorockets were jettisoned too early, increasing re-entry speed to 1,400 miles per hour, the capsule splashed down 130 miles beyond the target zone. At impact, two holes were punched in the capsule, causing it to take on 800 pounds of seawater. It took nearly two hours for Navy helicopters to locate the listing capsule; by then, Ham was in a rage, snarling and biting at his rescuers. During the post-flight press conference, the camera flash bulbs further angered the chimp, who viciously bared his fangs to the world.
While monkeys were actually flying in space, the Mercury 7 proceeded with training exercises. The astronauts were taken for flights aboard F-100 jets, executing Mach 1.4 dives, and C-130 transport planes, flying parabolas; both exercises exposed them to periods of weightlessness.
Using flight simulators, the astronauts familiarized themselves with the newly designed space capsule. In January of 1959, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation had been awarded the contract to build 20 Mercury capsules. More than 4,000 suppliers ultimately contributed parts or materials for the spacecraft’s construction.
Only six-feet, ten-inches-long and six-feet, two-inches-wide (at its greatest diameter), the 4,300-pound capsule’s interior was cramped. Engineers and flight technicians, however, were not particularly concerned about the astronauts’ comfort, viewing pilots as superfluous additions to the space flights. The spacecraft’s propulsion, altitude, guidance, and re-entry systems were designed to be controlled exclusively by ground-based technicians. The astronauts bristled at the diminished role of the pilot, as Deke Slayton angrily acknowledged: “Mercury was designed to operate unmanned.” At one point, consideration was given to drugging the astronauts just prior to launch, rendering them immune to space sickness and G-force pain, and also preventing them from pushing buttons and flipping cockpit switches.
“All we need to louse things up is a skilled space pilot with his hands itching for the controls,”
In preparation for manned space flight, NASA experimented with animals. The first passengers were pigs, who were strapped inside Mercury capsules and dropped from high altitudes to test the spacecraft’s impact resistance. The porkers emerged from the exercise with only mild injuries, which humorously validated the claims of many veteran test pilots—astronauts really were just “Spam in a Can.”
On May 29, 1959, NASA launched an Army Jupiter missile transporting Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a South American squirrel monkey, into space. Both monkeys wore electrodes to measure their physiological responses to weightlessness and G-forces during the 300-mile-high flight. After splash down, the rocket’s passenger compartment was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, where both passengers were found tucked away, safe and sound.
The next space explorers were chimpanzees, who were selected because their reaction times were nearly identical to those of human beings. A group of 40 chimps housed at New Mexico’s Holloman Aerospace Medical Center were trained for space flight. On January 21, 1961, six of the astrochimps, along with 20 handlers and medical specialists, travelled from New Mexico to Cape Canaveral, in preparation for the first test launches. The now impatient Mercury astronauts questioned the need for further test flights; a disgusted Alan Shepard expressed hope that the next launch would result in a “chimp barbecue.”
On January 31, 1961, ape number 61, nicknamed Ham, an acronym for Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, was launched into space. Strapped in a cockpit seat within a plastic pressure chamber the size of a trunk (designed to simulate conditions inside a spacesuit), Ham endured the 16-minute, 39-second flight, sustaining only a minor injury—a bruised nose that occurred during lift-off or splash down.
Ham’s flight was not without misadventure. When the spacecraft’s retrorockets were jettisoned too early, increasing re-entry speed to 1,400 miles per hour, the capsule splashed down 130 miles beyond the target zone. At impact, two holes were punched in the capsule, causing it to take on 800 pounds of seawater. It took nearly two hours for Navy helicopters to locate the listing capsule; by then, Ham was in a rage, snarling and biting at his rescuers. During the post-flight press conference, the camera flash bulbs further angered the chimp, who viciously bared his fangs to the world.
While monkeys were actually flying in space, the Mercury 7 proceeded with training exercises. The astronauts were taken for flights aboard F-100 jets, executing Mach 1.4 dives, and C-130 transport planes, flying parabolas; both exercises exposed them to periods of weightlessness.
Using flight simulators, the astronauts familiarized themselves with the newly designed space capsule. In January of 1959, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation had been awarded the contract to build 20 Mercury capsules. More than 4,000 suppliers ultimately contributed parts or materials for the spacecraft’s construction.
Only six-feet, ten-inches-long and six-feet, two-inches-wide (at its greatest diameter), the 4,300-pound capsule’s interior was cramped. Engineers and flight technicians, however, were not particularly concerned about the astronauts’ comfort, viewing pilots as superfluous additions to the space flights. The spacecraft’s propulsion, altitude, guidance, and re-entry systems were designed to be controlled exclusively by ground-based technicians. The astronauts bristled at the diminished role of the pilot, as Deke Slayton angrily acknowledged: “Mercury was designed to operate unmanned.” At one point, consideration was given to drugging the astronauts just prior to launch, rendering them immune to space sickness and G-force pain, and also preventing them from pushing buttons and flipping cockpit switches.
“All we need to louse things up is a skilled space pilot with his hands itching for the controls,”
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