Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

Exploring the Unknown 155
Anticipated Stresses:
a. The men who were chosen could expect a 2- to 3-year period of intensive
training including a study of space-frame structures, propulsion, inertial
guidance, systems reliability, aerodynamics, and physiology. They would actively
participate in training exercises such as: physical fitness, capsule parachute landings,
ballistic trajectory flights, and underwater escape from capsules. These represent
a prolonged period of genuine stresses.
The best practical laboratory tools to test these areas were: (1) review their
past accomplishments, (2) extract personal histories, and (3) conduct psychiatric
interviews and psychological tests. Additional information could be derived from
observation of these candidates during moments of calibrated hazing such as:
acceleration, pressure suit testing, immersing feet in ice water, and isolating the
subject. The accumulated impressions of these trained observers should guarantee
highly reliable maturity in those recommended.
b. Psychological and physical stresses will exist before, during, and after
each flight. The psychological stresses will include fears and anxiety about possible
accidents or death. Although well disguised in the mature test pilot, they will be present.
The psychiatric evaluation should reveal those who are stable and reliable.
The physical stresses of blast-off and orbit will include acceleration, noise,
vibration, weightlessness, tumbling if stabilization is not achieved, and possible
capsule depressurization. Those insults of re-entry will contain deceleration,
noise, vibration, and heat if the cooling system fails. Landing will be accompanied
by deceleration. Before recovery there is the possibility that the capsule will sink.
There is also the possibility of isolation in a remote and uninhabitable climate
and topography.
The physical facilities available at the Aerospace Medical Laboratory are
able to duplicate the important physical and psychological stresses mentioned
above. These facilities include: human centrifuge, extremely low-pressure (high-altitude)
chamber, heat-controlled test rooms, equilibrium-vibration chair, intense
noise generator, aircraft (C-131B) specially modified to safely fly Keplerian trajectories
(weightlessness), tumbling turntable, psychiatric interviewing rooms, and
anechoic chamber.
Simulating Tests:
* The tests performed at the Lovelace Foundation are detailed in the
Appendix. [not included]
Those tests simulating stresses anticipated during Project Mercury are:
transverse g profiles (acceleration tests) and vibration-equilibrium and intense
noise profiles (biological acoustical tests). Weightlessness tests were not performed
on the candidates for one main reason: it would have been impossible
in scheduling always to meet the minimum flying safety requirements for each
flight each day for 6 weeks. Tumbling tests are so unpleasant and the nausea so
prolonged as to warrant its exclusion for the profile.