Space Chimp Number One
from Gerhard Holtkamp, 30. January 2011, 21:56
Half a century ago a flight by a chimpanzee left its mark in space history. But all did not go as planned...
50 years ago on January 31, 1961, a chimpanzee dominated the news all over the globe. His name Ham was actually an acronym for Holloman Aero Med. Ham came to Holloman Airforce Base in New Mexico in 1959 from his native West Africa where he was born in July 1957 (this date was based on the development of his teeth). He was enlisted as "Aeromedical Research Laboratory Subject No.65".
Ham was not the first animal to fly into space. That honor goes to Albert I a resus monkey who was launched with a V-2 rocket out of White Sands, New Mexico in June 1948. In the following decade a number of monkeys, dogs, mice, rats and rabbits were sent into space by different American and Russian rockets.
This was often the last thing those animals ever did as rockets had a habit of blowing up or otherwise they crashed on impact as soft landing systems still needed to be developed. The first animal to survive a spaceflight was a mouse launched with a V-2 on August 31, 1948. Three years later Yorick became the first monkey to survive his space adventure.
The major objective of all those tests was of course to find out if and how humans might be able to go into space one day. With the launch of Sputnik I the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States started and soon people everywhere wondered who would be the first human in space - a Russian or an American?
At the beginning of 1961 things were heating up. While the Russians were at an advantage with their R-7 rocket which was powerful enough to place a capsule into orbit the Americans would still need at least a few more months to perfect their Atlas rocket. But they had a different approach anyway. Before attempting orbital flights the Americans first wanted to send astronauts on a suborbital shot. A small Redstone rocket would suffice for that.
Five weeks after a successful test of the Redstone with a Mercury capsule on top but without a living creature inside another Redstone was standing on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. It was January 31, 1961 and exactly three years after the Americans had sent their first satellite into orbit. Inside the Mercury capsule was not a human being, however, but Ham the chimpanzee. Our next of kin so to speak.
Ham had received 219 hours of training over a 15 month period in a special behavioral task he had to perform which consisted of pushing either a right- or a left-hand lever depending on which of three colored lights was on. If he did it right he would receive a banana pellet as reward otherwise an electric shock at his foot. He was also subjected to simulated Redstone launch profiles on a centrifuge prior to his flight.
All this was in accordance with the "Principles of Laboratory Animal Care" established by the National Society for Medical Research which of course may have meant little to the individual animals be it rats, cats or monkeys. There were a few protesters who complained to NASA but they were generally laughed at by the public at large. The fate of the United States and by implication of the Free World was thought to be at stake depending on whether an American would be first in space - so the life of a chimpanzee would be a minor price to pay.
By far the most vocal protesters against using a chimpanzee for spaceflight tests were the very astronauts also preparing for those flights. As seasoned test pilots they were used to push technology to its limits and live with the risk. They looked upon the whole chimpanzee scheme as a great circus act and a waste of money and they felt humiliated by it (there were quite a number of jokes at the time with astronauts receiving a banana after pushing the right button etc.).
Indeed looking back from today's perspective the flight of Ham seems to have been pointless. Everything one needed to know to send a human into space was already known: A number of monkeys had already flown into space on sounding rockets and ballistic missiles with no ill effects (if the rocket had not exploded and the landing was soft enough). The astronauts had trained for the g-loads during launch and reentry in centrifuges and had experienced 20-second periods of weightlessness on parabolic airplane flights. The technical systems had been tested in unmanned (un-chimpanzeed) flights and the astronauts were ready and willing to accept the risk of "expanding the envelope".
But the NASA medical teams and psychologists thought differently and the administration went along with it probably because of the public relations setback in case an astronaut perished during a spaceflight without having done animal trials first. After all the astronauts were no anonymous test pilots risking their lives at an out-of-sight location but they had become media stars groomed by NASA PR. Had there been an Animal Rights movement as we know it today the decision might have been different. But this was 1961 and Ham got dressed up in a spacesuit.
There were some minor technical problems during the countdown but otherwise the largest concern was the weather in the recovery area. Liftoff finally did occur at 11:54:51 a.m. local time (instead of a planned 9:30 a.m.). Typically the powered phase of the Redstone flight would last 142 seconds. But individual rockets burned their fuel at slightly different rates with the fastest so far having been 139 seconds.
To save an astronaut from an exploding rocket there was an automatic abort system which would trigger an escape rocket to pull the Mercury capsule away from the Redstone with a high acceleration similar to an ejection seat. This system would be turned off just before the end of powered flight to prevent it from triggering accidentally. After some discussions this turnoff time had been set to 137 seconds after liftoff.
As it turned out this particular Redstone had the hottest engine ever seen. It's trajectory was a little higher than planned but otherwise alright and at 134.5 seconds it had run dry of Liquid Oxygen and the engine stopped. Everything would have been fine but for the automatic abort system which had not yet been turned off and thought something was wrong.
The escape rocket was triggered pulling away the Mercury capsule at a whopping 17 g (17 times the Earth gravitational acceleration) instead of the (maximum) 6.5 g of the Redstone rocket. This had several effects: Instead of a planned altitude of 185 km, a range of 467 km and 5 minutes of weightlessness the Mercury actually flew 252 km high and 672 km far with 6½ minutes of weightlessness. This higher trajectory in turn meant that deceleration at reentry would peak at 14.5 g rather than 8 or 9 g.
If this hadn't been uncomfortable enough for our chimpanzee-astronaut things got worse as some malfuntion developed in the test equipment so that Ham would sometimes get shocks rather than a banana pellet when he did everything right. Still on the whole he performed admirably even in this non-nominal situation. As the diagram shows his heart rate and respiration went up during launch but fell back to normal values during weightlessness only to peak again during the stress of reentry.
After a total flight time of 16½ minutes the capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean a little harder than it should have and there was also some water leaking into it. Due to the longer than planned distance it took an hour and forty-five minutes to pick up Ham. He was found to be slightly fatigued and dehydrated but otherwise in good shape.
The flight control team felt that the mission had been successful. The problems encountered may have looked serious but were actually minor and easy to fix. The way should now be free to launch a human into space in March. But it wasn't as two groups were opposed.
First there was the "German" Redstone team under Wernher von Braun who felt embarrassed by the performance of the particular Redstone used for Ham's flight. They wanted to do some engineering changes and demanded another testflight. This flight took place on March 24 but without a proper Mercury capsule on top as the Mercury team refused and called this a Booster Development flight. This time the Redstone worked perfectly and preparations began for a human flight at the beginning of May.
The second group to object was the medical community. Although Ham had performed exceptionally well given the circumstances they felt that more animal tests were necessary. A report was being prepared recommending a halt to human spaceflight plans until about 50 chimps had been tested under extreme conditions on centrifuges etc. some of them "all the way to destruction".
It was a young Russian who saved those poor animals from a terrible fate: On the very day this report was about to be delivered to the White House Yuri Gagarin lifted off into orbit and into history. America had run out of time to test chimpanzees. A human astronaut would have to walk to the launch pad as soon as possible to restore the nation's pride. (But oddly enough when the time came for the first orbital flight by an American NASA insisted on flying chimpanzee Enos first.)
Had only the Redstone on Ham's flight shut down three seconds later Alan Shepard would have flown into space in March 1961 and thus become the first human in space. Or would he? Would the Russians have tried to advance Gagarin's flight by a few weeks to beat the Americans? I don't think so for two reasons:
Both Americans and Russians knew that the first human spaceflights would be dangerous and they were willing to accept the risks. But they were not willing to recklessly put humans into harms way and only would launch men into space when they felt they were ready for it.
But the Russians didn't have to speed up things because Gagarin's flight would be orbital while the Americans still needed almost another year to put their first astronaut into orbit. They could even argue (and actually did so) that you have to be in orbit in order to call yourself a proper spaceman. After all it is generally accepted that the Space Age began with the launch of the first Earth satellite even though ballistic missiles and sounding rockets had soared into space much earlier.
So the less-than-perfect flight of Ham the chimpanzee had the benificial effect for space historians that there was no lengthy debate about who made the first spaceflight.
As to Ham himself he had to undergo some time of thorough medical examinations. He remained in the chimp astronaut corps for another year or so serving as a backup for the orbital flight of Enos and after that suffered the fate of an animal celebraty:
He was put on display in zoos where he lived alone most of the time until his death on January 17, 1983. He did get a hero's funeral and his remains were laid to rest in front of the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
By the time of Ham's death the status of animals in space had shifted from "Aeromedical Research Subjects" to "Biological Payloads". The range of species broadened to answer questions like how aquatic animals (who on Earth live in a weightless environment of sorts when floating in water) would behave in true weightlessness with research being done in a true laboratory environment like Spacelab or the ISS.
Soon we will be celebrating the golden anniversary of the first human spaceflight but for the moment: Chimpanzees all over the world - THIS is YOUR day!
50 years ago on January 31, 1961, a chimpanzee dominated the news all over the globe. His name Ham was actually an acronym for Holloman Aero Med. Ham came to Holloman Airforce Base in New Mexico in 1959 from his native West Africa where he was born in July 1957 (this date was based on the development of his teeth). He was enlisted as "Aeromedical Research Laboratory Subject No.65".
First Animals in Space
Ham was not the first animal to fly into space. That honor goes to Albert I a resus monkey who was launched with a V-2 rocket out of White Sands, New Mexico in June 1948. In the following decade a number of monkeys, dogs, mice, rats and rabbits were sent into space by different American and Russian rockets.
This was often the last thing those animals ever did as rockets had a habit of blowing up or otherwise they crashed on impact as soft landing systems still needed to be developed. The first animal to survive a spaceflight was a mouse launched with a V-2 on August 31, 1948. Three years later Yorick became the first monkey to survive his space adventure.
The major objective of all those tests was of course to find out if and how humans might be able to go into space one day. With the launch of Sputnik I the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States started and soon people everywhere wondered who would be the first human in space - a Russian or an American?
Preparations
At the beginning of 1961 things were heating up. While the Russians were at an advantage with their R-7 rocket which was powerful enough to place a capsule into orbit the Americans would still need at least a few more months to perfect their Atlas rocket. But they had a different approach anyway. Before attempting orbital flights the Americans first wanted to send astronauts on a suborbital shot. A small Redstone rocket would suffice for that.
Five weeks after a successful test of the Redstone with a Mercury capsule on top but without a living creature inside another Redstone was standing on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. It was January 31, 1961 and exactly three years after the Americans had sent their first satellite into orbit. Inside the Mercury capsule was not a human being, however, but Ham the chimpanzee. Our next of kin so to speak.
Ham had received 219 hours of training over a 15 month period in a special behavioral task he had to perform which consisted of pushing either a right- or a left-hand lever depending on which of three colored lights was on. If he did it right he would receive a banana pellet as reward otherwise an electric shock at his foot. He was also subjected to simulated Redstone launch profiles on a centrifuge prior to his flight.
Protests
All this was in accordance with the "Principles of Laboratory Animal Care" established by the National Society for Medical Research which of course may have meant little to the individual animals be it rats, cats or monkeys. There were a few protesters who complained to NASA but they were generally laughed at by the public at large. The fate of the United States and by implication of the Free World was thought to be at stake depending on whether an American would be first in space - so the life of a chimpanzee would be a minor price to pay.
By far the most vocal protesters against using a chimpanzee for spaceflight tests were the very astronauts also preparing for those flights. As seasoned test pilots they were used to push technology to its limits and live with the risk. They looked upon the whole chimpanzee scheme as a great circus act and a waste of money and they felt humiliated by it (there were quite a number of jokes at the time with astronauts receiving a banana after pushing the right button etc.).
Indeed looking back from today's perspective the flight of Ham seems to have been pointless. Everything one needed to know to send a human into space was already known: A number of monkeys had already flown into space on sounding rockets and ballistic missiles with no ill effects (if the rocket had not exploded and the landing was soft enough). The astronauts had trained for the g-loads during launch and reentry in centrifuges and had experienced 20-second periods of weightlessness on parabolic airplane flights. The technical systems had been tested in unmanned (un-chimpanzeed) flights and the astronauts were ready and willing to accept the risk of "expanding the envelope".
But the NASA medical teams and psychologists thought differently and the administration went along with it probably because of the public relations setback in case an astronaut perished during a spaceflight without having done animal trials first. After all the astronauts were no anonymous test pilots risking their lives at an out-of-sight location but they had become media stars groomed by NASA PR. Had there been an Animal Rights movement as we know it today the decision might have been different. But this was 1961 and Ham got dressed up in a spacesuit.
The Flight
There were some minor technical problems during the countdown but otherwise the largest concern was the weather in the recovery area. Liftoff finally did occur at 11:54:51 a.m. local time (instead of a planned 9:30 a.m.). Typically the powered phase of the Redstone flight would last 142 seconds. But individual rockets burned their fuel at slightly different rates with the fastest so far having been 139 seconds.
To save an astronaut from an exploding rocket there was an automatic abort system which would trigger an escape rocket to pull the Mercury capsule away from the Redstone with a high acceleration similar to an ejection seat. This system would be turned off just before the end of powered flight to prevent it from triggering accidentally. After some discussions this turnoff time had been set to 137 seconds after liftoff.
As it turned out this particular Redstone had the hottest engine ever seen. It's trajectory was a little higher than planned but otherwise alright and at 134.5 seconds it had run dry of Liquid Oxygen and the engine stopped. Everything would have been fine but for the automatic abort system which had not yet been turned off and thought something was wrong.
The escape rocket was triggered pulling away the Mercury capsule at a whopping 17 g (17 times the Earth gravitational acceleration) instead of the (maximum) 6.5 g of the Redstone rocket. This had several effects: Instead of a planned altitude of 185 km, a range of 467 km and 5 minutes of weightlessness the Mercury actually flew 252 km high and 672 km far with 6½ minutes of weightlessness. This higher trajectory in turn meant that deceleration at reentry would peak at 14.5 g rather than 8 or 9 g.
If this hadn't been uncomfortable enough for our chimpanzee-astronaut things got worse as some malfuntion developed in the test equipment so that Ham would sometimes get shocks rather than a banana pellet when he did everything right. Still on the whole he performed admirably even in this non-nominal situation. As the diagram shows his heart rate and respiration went up during launch but fell back to normal values during weightlessness only to peak again during the stress of reentry.
After a total flight time of 16½ minutes the capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean a little harder than it should have and there was also some water leaking into it. Due to the longer than planned distance it took an hour and forty-five minutes to pick up Ham. He was found to be slightly fatigued and dehydrated but otherwise in good shape.
Aftermath
The flight control team felt that the mission had been successful. The problems encountered may have looked serious but were actually minor and easy to fix. The way should now be free to launch a human into space in March. But it wasn't as two groups were opposed.
First there was the "German" Redstone team under Wernher von Braun who felt embarrassed by the performance of the particular Redstone used for Ham's flight. They wanted to do some engineering changes and demanded another testflight. This flight took place on March 24 but without a proper Mercury capsule on top as the Mercury team refused and called this a Booster Development flight. This time the Redstone worked perfectly and preparations began for a human flight at the beginning of May.
The second group to object was the medical community. Although Ham had performed exceptionally well given the circumstances they felt that more animal tests were necessary. A report was being prepared recommending a halt to human spaceflight plans until about 50 chimps had been tested under extreme conditions on centrifuges etc. some of them "all the way to destruction".
It was a young Russian who saved those poor animals from a terrible fate: On the very day this report was about to be delivered to the White House Yuri Gagarin lifted off into orbit and into history. America had run out of time to test chimpanzees. A human astronaut would have to walk to the launch pad as soon as possible to restore the nation's pride. (But oddly enough when the time came for the first orbital flight by an American NASA insisted on flying chimpanzee Enos first.)
Impact on Space History
Had only the Redstone on Ham's flight shut down three seconds later Alan Shepard would have flown into space in March 1961 and thus become the first human in space. Or would he? Would the Russians have tried to advance Gagarin's flight by a few weeks to beat the Americans? I don't think so for two reasons:
Both Americans and Russians knew that the first human spaceflights would be dangerous and they were willing to accept the risks. But they were not willing to recklessly put humans into harms way and only would launch men into space when they felt they were ready for it.
But the Russians didn't have to speed up things because Gagarin's flight would be orbital while the Americans still needed almost another year to put their first astronaut into orbit. They could even argue (and actually did so) that you have to be in orbit in order to call yourself a proper spaceman. After all it is generally accepted that the Space Age began with the launch of the first Earth satellite even though ballistic missiles and sounding rockets had soared into space much earlier.
So the less-than-perfect flight of Ham the chimpanzee had the benificial effect for space historians that there was no lengthy debate about who made the first spaceflight.
The Later Years
As to Ham himself he had to undergo some time of thorough medical examinations. He remained in the chimp astronaut corps for another year or so serving as a backup for the orbital flight of Enos and after that suffered the fate of an animal celebraty:
He was put on display in zoos where he lived alone most of the time until his death on January 17, 1983. He did get a hero's funeral and his remains were laid to rest in front of the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.By the time of Ham's death the status of animals in space had shifted from "Aeromedical Research Subjects" to "Biological Payloads". The range of species broadened to answer questions like how aquatic animals (who on Earth live in a weightless environment of sorts when floating in water) would behave in true weightlessness with research being done in a true laboratory environment like Spacelab or the ISS.
Soon we will be celebrating the golden anniversary of the first human spaceflight but for the moment: Chimpanzees all over the world - THIS is YOUR day!
