BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR and the launching of Sputnik there had been uncertainty as to the roles and missions of the Army, Navy, and Air Force in the exploration and exploitation of space, as well as in missile development from which space technology derived.[2]

In August 1958, after passage of the National Space Act, President Eisenhower assigned NASA the mission of manned space flight to be carried out as a national objective at the earliest feasible time. To accomplish this goal, NASA was to receive support from all the resources of the Nation, including military medical resources. Short of a sudden defense emergency, this reservoir of aerospace medical strength would support the NASA mission of manned space flight.

CLINICAL FACTORS: USAF AEROSPACE MEDICINE

Not withstanding the conviction of certain leading civilian scientists that space medicine was an entirely new field, the U.S. Air Force bioastronautics community as early as 1949 had considered space medicine to be an extension of aviation medicine.[3]

Indeed, as early as World War I, the Army—parent of the U.S. Air Force—had trained a special kind of medical officer, the flight surgeon. This specialist, while still serving in many cases as a clinician treating sick patients, more often functioned as a medical officer concerned with healthy pilots under the unique stress of surviving in an alien atmosphere. He also worked with the design engineer on the development of equipment and instruments to help a pilot overcome the adverse environment. Thus, medicine was already wedded to flight technology. This had led to manned flight to extreme altitudes by midcentury. Ultimately, the bioastronautics experts believed, it would lead to manned space flight.

The U.S. Air Force (a part of the Army until 1947) had thus recognized as early as World War I that the physician was vitally important as a member of the aeronautics team.[4] During World War I the new School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Mineola, Long Island, had concerned itself with the physiological problems of stress faced by man in flight, and the medical staff had concentrated on establishing physical standards necessary for military pilots. Following World War I the school had moved to Brooks Air Force Base, Tex., and subsequently to Randolph Air Force Base, where a small in-house group sponsored aviation medical research and education, the only resource of its kind in the world.[5]

After World War II the commandant, Col. Harry G. Armstrong,[6] a pioneer in aviation medicine, gathered together certain leading German scientists in the field of aviation medicine and space science.[7] On February 9, 1949, the first Department of Space Medicine in the world was established at the school, and Dr. Hubertus Strughold subsequently became the first professor of Space Medicine.[8]

As director of aeromedical research for the German Air Force, Dr. Strughold had been aware of the space-flight ambitions of Drs. Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun of the V-2 program at Peenemunde. He had himself theorized for several decades on the medical implications of space flight.[9]

Strughold and his modest SAM staff in 1949 estimated that the main medical problems of space flight could be formulated and the majority of the questions fully answered within 10 to 15 years. Hardware could be developed within 15 to 20 years. The first manned space flights thus would become feasible between 1964 and 1969.

Among the fundamental studies initiated were those in acceleration, noise and vibration, atmospheric control, weightlessness, and nutrition. Unfortunately, noted one British lecturer:

At that time it appeared that most of the problems encountered in space flight would be logical extensions of those already encountered in aviation, and that they were not insurmountable. Two major problems of manned space flight, it was believed, were solar radiation and weightlessness.

As a first step toward solving these problems, the School of Aviation Medicine turned to the experience of the Germans at Peenemunde and in the German aeromedical laboratories. This led to the publication in 1950 of the two-volume German Aviation Medicine—World War II, prepared by 56 leading German aviation specialists, and translated and published by the U.S. Air Force. Such topics as the physiological fundamentals of high altitude and acceleration and the potential problems of man under gravity-free conditions were discussed.[11] Thus the advances of German aviation medicine in World War II became spoils of war and a part of the open literature in the field.

Meanwhile, as early as 1948, representatives of the U.S. Air Force School of Aviation Medicine and the Lovelace Foundation had held symposia aimed toward aiding the accomplishment of manned travel in the upper atmosphere, emphasis being on the concept that "one must learn to walk before one runs." Two subsequent symposia in 1950 and 1951 led to the publication of Physics and Medicine of the Upper Atmosphere, which provided data cross sectioning of four scientific disciplines: Astrophysics, aeronautical engineering, radiobiology and aviation medicine.[12] The need for cross-fertilization of scientific disciplines, as recognized by this group of the Nation’s scientists, was the most important single factor with which the scientific community during the next few years must cope to meet the complex requirements of the advancing technology of manned flight and manned space flight.

By the midfifties current thinking in the Air Force was increasingly oriented toward possible manned space flight. For example, in February 1957 The Journal of Aviation Medicine published an article on "Selection and Training of Personnel for Space Flight," which concluded that "space flight is not drastically different from most aspects of aviation which are now familiar."[13] This article aptly foreshadowed the pattern that was actually followed in the selection and training program for Project Mercury.

By the midthirties, advancing technology required that the skills of the flight surgeon be combined with those of the aeronautical engineer to explore the problems of "human engineering." With the establishment of the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Field, Ohio, in 1934, the flight surgeon assumed a key position in the Air Force program for applied research and development of hardware. During World War II the Army Air Forces worked with NACA in developing a human-factors program, for man remained the weak link in new weapon systems that included man, plane, and missile. The basic problems of design engineering and life-support systems as defined in that period were to be pertinent a decade and a half later as the Nation embarked on its manned space-flight program.[14] (See brief weightlessness picture)

After the war it became increasingly apparent that aircraft operational requirements were leading man nearer to space itself. Specialists in aviation medicine, watching pilot performances at ever higher altitudes and faster speeds in the rocket-powered aircraft of the X-series, began to think of space flight as a logical extension of high-altitude flight. In October 1947, when test pilot Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager, then a captain in the Air Force, flew the rocket-powered USAF-NACA X-1 faster than the speed of sound, a new milestone had been passed.

Two months later, Lt. Col. John P. Stapp, USAF (MC), who was interested in the problems of deceleration made his first rocket-propelled research-sled ride at a speed of 90 mph. On March 19, 1954, he traveled at a speed of 421 mph on the 3,500-foot track; on August 19, at a speed of 502 mph; and on December 10, 1954, at a speed of 632 mph, which made him "the fastest man on earth" (as described in current news media). See picture. Bushnell’s authoritative and highly readable history of the Air Force Missile Development Center, Holloman Air Force Base, for the period 1946-58 describes these developments, as well as the related animal experimentation program, in great detail.[15]

Other research efforts were also underway. As early as March 1927 Capt. H. C. Gray (U.S. Army Air Corps) had ascended to 28,910 feet in a free balloon for an unofficial altitude record. In May 1931, Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer made the first successful manned ascent into the stratosphere from Augsburg, Germany, and established a new world altitude record of 51,777 feet. In 1934 three Air Corps officers, Maj. W. E. Kepner, Capt. A. W. Stevens, and Capt. Orvil A. Anderson, attained a 60,613- foot altitude in an Air Corps-National Geographic Society balloon. Subsequent flights were made by both the Air Force and the Navy to study the problems of altitude. For example, in August 1957, Maj. David G. Simons, USAF (MC), a flight surgeon, remained airborne for 32 hours in the Man-High II flight. He established a manned-balloon altitude record of 101,516 feet, ascending at Crosby, Minn., and landing at Elm Lake, S. Dak.[16] This was 2 months before Sputnik.

In response to the drastic upgrading of research and development in the postwar years, the U.S. Air Force organized, in January 1951, the Air Research and Development Command (later the Air Force Systems Command) to provide the best in new manned and unmanned weapon systems. Important objectives of the now command were the undertaking of scientific research and the development of applied technology to accomplish manned flight at increasing altitudes and speeds.[17]

The documented record of these highly significant research and development milestones that occurred in the early 1950’s under the leadership of Gen. Thomas Power, then Commanding General of ARDC, has not yet appeared in the open literature. Such a history, describing the conceptual thinking at the R&D level during this period, should go far to unify the pattern of progress by Air Force scientists and engineers spreading from Kitty Hawk to the Man-in-Space R&D effort carried out later under Gen. Bernard A. Schriever.[18]

U.S. NAVAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

At the U.S. Naval School of Aviation Medicine, established in 1939 at Pensacola, Fla., considerable research and development had gone forward since 1940 under joint Navy and National Research Council sponsorship. Capt. Ashton Graybiel, USN (MC), Director of Medical Research, developed a strong research and development capability in support of naval aviation. The research programs dealing with the problems of weightlessness and the vestibular function, for example, were particularly important to future NASA effort. In the pre-Sputnik period, the U.S. Naval School of Aviation undertook biological research projects for the U.S. Army. These projects, discussed later in this chapter, helped to build biological capability for manned space flight. Scientific specialities included biochemistry, biometrics, biophysics, cardiology, medical electronics, neurophysiology and acoustics, physical chemistry, physiology, psychophysiology, and personnel psychology. Among the special facilities at the school were low-pressure chambers, a low-level alpha-radiation laboratory, an electrophysiological laboratory, a slow-rotation room, and a human-disorientation device.[19]

The Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory, located at the Naval Air Development Center, Johnsville, Pa., had the largest human centrifuge in the world (with a 4,000-hp motor, a 50-foot arm, and a 40-g capability). This centrifuge was the Navy’s principal tool for in-house research programs for 10 years, and was used extensively in the X-15 and Dyna-Soar programs. It was subsequently utilized in the Mercury program.[20] (See centrifuge picture)

In Philadelphia, Pa., the Naval Air Crew Equipment Laboratory since 1942 had conducted basic research in biological, psychological, and human engineering aspects of aviation medicine related to personal and safety equipment. Special facilities included, among others, underwater test facilities, a complete liquid oxygen laboratory, and an escape-system recovery net capable of recovering ejected free-flight seats and capsules.[21] This laboratory, too, was to make important contributions to Project Mercury.

PRE-SPUTNIK COOPERATIVE BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTATION

Following World War II, limited biological experiments had been carried out by military and university scientists. Tests had covered such factors as the effects of radiation upon living organisms and the behavior of animals in the absence of gravitational forces. The first of these experiments was undertaken with captured V-2 rockets at Holloman Air Base, N. Mex. In 1946-41, Harvard biologists, in cooperation with scientists from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, recovered seeds and fruit flies after flights at altitudes up to 160 km. This group was joined in 1948 by Dr. James P. Henry of the U.S. Air Force, and during the next few years successful flights were launched with mice and monkeys as passengers.[22]

In June 1948 the first American primate, Albert I, was launched in a V-2 rocket from White Sands, N. Mex., but it died of suffocation. A year later, on June 14, a second anesthetized monkey, Albert II, was sent aloft in the same V-2 vehicle. That monkey survived the flight but was killed on impact. On September 16 a third monkey was killed when the rocket exploded at 35,000 feet. In December 1949, a fourth monkey was flown, with data on ECG and respiration successfully telemetered, but the monkey died on impact. A mouse sent aloft on October 31 was not recovered alive, although pictures were made of its behavior in a weightless state.

Aerobee rockets also were used. On April 18, 1951, Henry and his group sent aloft an anesthetized monkey and several mice. The animals were not recovered because of parachute failure. An anesthetized monkey and 11 mice sent aloft in an Aerobee rocket on September 20, 1951, were all recovered alive, although the monkey died 2 hours after impact. These mice became the first known living creatures to survive actual spaceflight conditions. The following May, two anesthetized monkeys, Pat and Mike, together with two mice, were flown to a 62-km altitude. Pat and Mike were the first primates to survive actual space-flight conditions.[23] By 1952 the supply of V-2 rockets was exhausted, and biological experiments in rockets and missiles came to a halt for the next 6 years.

Paralleling these activities since 1950 were biological experiments carried out in unmanned balloon flights. On September 8, 1950, the U.S. Air Force sent white mice aloft in an "Albert" Capsule to a height of 47,000 feet. They were recovered dead because of capsule depressurization and leakage 7 hours after launch. On the 28^th of that month, white mice were sent aloft to 97,000 feet and recovered unharmed after 3 hours 40 minutes. On January 18, 1951, an "Albert" capsule containing mice went aloft. It was recovered after 2 Hours, the balloon having burst at 45,000 feet. The following August, hamsters were sent aloft to 59,000 feet in a Minnesota capsule, but again there was a balloon failure. Data on this flight are lacking.[24] These experiments culminated ultimately in the Man-High experiments, in which a Human subject was lifted aloft on the eve of Sputnik. These pioneering efforts were of limited value, but they laid the groundwork for biological experimentation prior to high-altitude manned flight and space flight.

Also important during this decade was the development of the X-12, X-15,[25] and Dyna-Soar programs, all concerned with testing human factors and all providing basic knowledge, upon which the first U.S. space program would be built.

NOTES TO CHAPTER II

[1] The NASA terminology space medicine and the U.S. Air Force terminology aerospace medicine are used interchangeably in the present discussion. Bioastronautics is the Air Force term for the total complex of scientific disciplines, including medicine, necessary to support manned flight and manned space flight, and is used in that context in the present study.

[2] Ballistic missiles had been given highest national priority in the race for first-generation ICBM’s and IRBM’s. See Eugene M. Emme, ed., History of Rocket Technology (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1964).

[3] See for example, Harry G. Armstrong, Aerospace Medicine (Baltimore:

Williams & Wilkins, 1961), successor to The Principles and Practice of Aviation Medicine (1^st ed., 1934), the classical reference in the field. The current scientific literature in the field is systematically abstracted for Aerospace Medicine, successor to the Journal of Aviation Medicine, by Dr. Arnold Jacobius, of the Library of Congress. The reader is referred to these two basic sources for further review of the scientific literature in the field.

[4] Mae Mills Link and Hubert A. Coleman, Medical Support of the Army Air Forces in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, USAF, 1955), pp. 230-351.

[5] Subsequently, to keep pace with the approaching space age, SAM in 1959 moved back to Brooks AFB, where a new complex of research and testing facilities was being constructed. SAM was redesignated the School of Aerospace Medicine.

[6] Harry G. Armstrong, "Origins of Space Medicine," U.S. Armed Forces Med. J., vol. X, no. 4, Apr. 1959, p. 392. The reader is also referred to the extensive documentation sources in the archives in the Aerospace Medical Div., Brooks AFB, Tex. The author of the present study, who was senior Air Force Medical Historian from 1951 to 1962, has used these documents extensively, as well as documents in the Office of the Surgeon General, USAF, to which the reader is referred.

[7] This original group included Hubertus Strughold, M.D., Ph. D., who had been director of Aeromedical Research Inst., Berlin, Germany; Dr. Heinz Haber, who later became chief science consultant for Walt Disney Productions; Dr. Fritz Haber, who designed the sealed cabin for use at Randolph AFB, and later was associated with Avco Manufacturing Corp.; and Dr. Konrad Johannes Karl Buettner, a bioclimatologist from Westendorf, Germany, who later was associated with the Boeing Co. The group was joined subsequently by Dr. Hans Georg Clamann, who became research physiologist at the school, and by Dr. Siegfried Gerathewohl, who had been chief of the Psychological Testing Center of the German Air Force during World War II. Gerathewohl later joined NASA.

[8] Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, Air Force News Service Release No. 1299, Mar. 28, 1958.

[9] Personal communication.

[10] D. I. Fryer, "The Medical Sciences and Space Flight," R.A.E. News, February 1964. See also, for example, Otis O. Benson, Jr., and Hubertus Strughold, eds., Physics and Medicine of the Atmosphere and Space (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1960). The reader is referred to Dr. Strughold’s extensive published works, particularly "From Aviation Medicine to Space Medicine," J. Aviation Med., Vol. 23, no. 4, Aug. 1952, pp. 315-318.

[11] German Aviation Medicine—World War II (2 vols.), prepared under the auspices of the Surgeon General, USAF (Washington, D.C., 1950). This volume, a classic in the field, is now out of print.

[12] Clayton S. White and Otis O. Benson, Jr., eds., Physics and Medicine of the Upper Atmosphere (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1952).

[13] David H. Beyer and Saul B. Sells, "Selection and Training of Personnel for Space Flight," J. Aviation Med., vol. 28, no. 1, February 1957, pp. 1-6. See also Paul A. Campbell, "Aviation Medicine on the Threshold of Space: A Symposium," J. Aviation Med., vol. 29, no. 7, July 1958, pp. 485-492.

[14] This program is discussed in detail in Link and Coleman, op. cit., pp. 230-351.

[15] David Bushnell, History of Research in Space Biology and Biodynamics, 1946-58, AF Missile Dev. Center, Holloman AFB, N. Mex., 1958. This study is a "must" for anyone interested in gaining a true perspective of the great amount of research and development that was carried out by the Air Force in this period. Statistics supplied by Colonel Stapp, Sept. 10, 1963; Air Force Pamphlet 190-2, p. 71; and Eugene M. Emme, Aeronautics and Astronautics, An American Chronology of Science and Technology in the Exploration of Space, 1915-1960 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1961), pp. 62, 68.

[16] Emme, Aeronautics and Astronautics, p. 87. This was to be followed by other flights such as Man-High III. See Emme, Aeronautics and Astronautics, appendix C, "Chronicle of Select Balloon Flights, 1927-1961," pp. 161-165. See also David Bushnell, Contributions of Balloon Operations to Research and Development at the Air Force Missile Development Center, 1947-58, AF Missile Dev. Center, Holloman AFB, N. Mex., 1958. This volume is also a "must" reference. Copy on file in NASA Historical Archives.

[17] When it became operational in April 1951, ARDC had four laboratories: Air Development Force at Wright Field, AF Cambridge Research Div., AF Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, and the Holloman AFB R&D establishment (later AFMDC). Later the Arnold Engineering Development Center (Tullahoma, Tenn.), AF Armament Center (Eglin AFB, Fla.), and the AF Special Weapons Center (Kirtland AFB, N. Mex.) were added.

[18] The author has discussed this important period with key Air Force personnel including Col. George D. Colchagoff, USAF, an engineer who was on General Power’s staff and was project officer for matters relating to space flight.

[19] "Navy Bioastronautic RDT&E Support of the NASA Manned Space Flight Program," Mar. 12, 1960, a staff paper prepared jointly by DOD and NASA. Copy on file in NASA Historical Archives.

[20] Ibid. See also, for example, NASA Project Mercury Paper No. 187, "Life System Aspects of Third Mercury Acceleration Laboratory Centrifuge Program," Space Task Group, NASA, Apr. 20, 1961.

[21] See note 19.

[22] Dietrich E. Beischer and Alfred R. Fregly, Animals and Man in Space, A Chronology and Annotated Bibliography Through the Year1960, ONR Rep. ACR-64 (USNSAM Monograph 5), Dept. of the Navy, p. 53. See particularly pp. 55-90 for charts and a bibliography of animal biological experiments through 1960.

[23] Ibid., pp. 56-57. See also Note 16.

[24] During the next 10 years more than 50 experiments were performed by investigators including D. G. Simons, J. P. Stapp, and others. Subjects included hamsters, cats, dogs, black and white mice, fruit flies, goldfish, seeds, chicken eggs, and human skin. More than 80 experiments of this type were carried out in all. Beischer and Fregly, op. cit., pp. 13-30.

[25] See Wendell H. Stillwell, X-15 Research Results With a Selected Bibliography, NASA SP-60, 1965.

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