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

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First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
1. Psychological stability is the most important consideration in evaluating
a candidate. The intelligence, maturity, and motivation of a candidate are
vital areas to be assessed before rendering a recommendation.
2. Excellent physiological performance was a secondary consideration in
the final Committee recommendations.
3. The main value of a severely stressful physiological test was the interpretation
of the psychological response to that stress test. Whenever a subject
terminated a severe test for psychological reasons, he was not recommended by
the Committee.
4. It is possible to eliminate subjects by use of stressful tests. It is not presently
possible to select subjects with confidence, where selection is based entirely
upon their excellent physiological performances.
5. No single, nonsimulating test has been identified which will be of great
assistance in recommending crew members. A large battery of tests, such as were
performed, lends confidence to the final recommendations.
6. Whenever a candidate is being considered for a special mission, it is
desirable that a large number of trained observers each have the opportunity to
test him and to render an opinion before the final recommendation
7. This study has demonstrated that there is no statistically significant difference
in the physiological or biochemical responses of the Mercury Astronauts
when compared with the remainder of the NASA candidates.
8. There is no evidence to support a thesis which maintains that visual
inspection, biochemical measurements, or physiological responses of a candidate
are of principal value in rendering a reliable recommendation of suitable candidates.
These are secondary considerations.
9. While the hormones and their metabolites are valuable research
tools, this study has demonstrated that they were not significantly different in the
Mercury Astronauts when compared with the remaining NASA candidates.
10. There is every reason to suspect that safe, standardized, moderately
stressful and severely stressful tests (such as having the subject walk on the treadmill
until he voluntarily terminates) would be of great assistance in future crew recommendation
programs, since severe stress also tests the candidate’s motivation.
11. It is believed that testing of those who did not volunteer as candidates
would be valuable, since the nonvolunteer group might lack the same intensity of
motivation which was possessed by the volunteers.
Document I-30
Document Title: John Glenn, Mercury Astronaut, NASA, to Lieutenant Commander
Jim Stockdale, USN, 17 December 1959.