References Vvp
1 Roads to Space, An Oral History of the Soviet Space Program, compiled by the Russian Scientific Research Center for Space Documentation, translated by Peter Berlin, edited by John Rhea. Aviation Week Group, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1995. 2 O.G. Gazenko and S. Georgiyevskiy, Preparation of the Animal Prior to the Experiment, pp. 353-359, in N.M. Sisakyan ed. , Problems of Space Biology, Vol. 1, NASA, Center for Aerospace Information. Russian title Problemy Kosmicheskoy Biologii, USSR Academy...
A unique proposal
In April 1948, Dr. Henry's department was approached by a parachute specialist from a laboratory also based at Wright Field. He had a rather unusual proposition. His group had been working on a project for the Cambridge Field Station, aimed at the development of electronic and photographic equipment for gathering information on the physics of the upper atmosphere. One of the laboratory's specific tasks was to design and manufacture parachutes of sufficient strength to permit the safe recovery...
The rocket sled bears
Even black bears, four of which first appeared at Holloman in late 1957, were used in Daisy Track test runs, as their pelvic region is very similar to that of humans. But - like the hog tests - these were more related to automobile crash restraint systems, according to Bushnell, seeking correlation between spinal injury in bears and humans'' 25 . The first use of a bear in a 20-g Daisy Track run would attract some unfavourable publicity when, following the run in which the animal showed no...
The first R2A dogs
As the year 1957 dawned, the first satellite dog'' flight, of Laika in Sputnik 2, was less than a year away. However, as hugely as that event unexpectedly loomed for the West, and as clear a demarcation it represented in the relentless progress of space flight, it would barely register on the radar of those involved in the dog flight programme. A full schedule of suborbital flights preceded Sputnik 2 in 1957, and an equally robust schedule would follow it for nearly three more years. For the...
Flight preparations
Following the October decision to launch Sputnik 2, the preparation of Laika and Albina had to begin immediately, as the necessary medical procedures required a 10-day healing period. Since neither dog nor capsule would be recovered, physiological reactions had to be read by instruments and radioed to the ground. One of the trickiest vitals to record was blood pressure. To constantly monitor this function, the carotid artery had to be drawn out of the dog's neck and sewn into a flap of skin. A...
Sally Amy And Moe
Like their rodent cousins in the highly-classified Project Discoverer, a trio of C-57 mice also achieved a successful space flight late in 1960. On 13 October, three black mice named Sally, Amy and Moe were installed in a heavily-shielded General Electric experimental re-entry vehicle known as the RVX-2A, mounted atop an Atlas-D rocket at Cape Canaveral's Atlantic Missile Range. Specially trained for this mission by the USAF School of Aviation Medicine hence the trio of names beginning with the...
Severe setbacks and relocation
Just as the Peenemunde team had begun to taste success, the Allies identified the launch facility as a priority target. On the evening of 17 18 August they sent in heavy bombers to flatten the launch centre. Under a full moon, 596 aircraft of Bomber Command dropped nearly 1,600 tons of bombs on the experimental factory at Peenemunde, following up with another heavy bomber raid on 25 August. The factory production of the V-2 was quickly relocated to a secret underground plant at Mittelwerk, near...
Animal research continues
While a chimpanzee would be the first to ride the Daisy Track and Ed Dittmer stressed there would always be a veterinarian present on the animal runs , the first human passenger was task scientist Lieutenant Wilbur Blount, who completed a run on 17 February 1956. By September the following year over 200 high-speed journeys had been made along the track, carrying humans, animals and mannequins. Thirteen months later, in October 1958, that number was nearing 400. Captain Eli Beeding would...
Rm 2d
Copyright Arwrzcj Koiartw, 2005 andr7ej i K3iti3 p lt 7ia oner pi RM-2D Polish rocket. Illustration Andrzej Kotarba Two launches were scheduled for 10 April 1961 from portable, makeshift gantries in the Bledowska Desert. The first, using RM-2C, would have a flashing electronic light attached, while the second would carry two mice in a specially-designed container as well as a parachute recovery system. The container and parachute pack would add a further 9 pounds of payload to the vehicle,...
Malashenkov Dimitri Some Unknown Pages Of The Living Organism S First Orbital
1 Richard M. Bissell, Jr., with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo, Reflections of a Cold Warrior From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1996, p. 119. 2 Asif A. Siddiqi, Korolev, Sputnik, and The International Geophysical Year, NASA History Office. Website accessed 8 March 2005. 3 John Rhea ed. , Roads to Space, An Oral History of the Soviet Space Programme, compiled by the Russian Scientific Research Centre for Space Documentation, translated by Peter Berlin,...
Miss Baker
Able's flight companion, Baker, was a tiny South American squirrel monkey, originally born in Iquitos in the Peruvian jungle sometime during 1958, but captured by hunters and brought to the United States. She weighed in at just 11 ounces. Together with 25 young spider monkeys purchased from a pet shop in Miami, she had been transported to the U.S. Navy Aviation Medical School in Pensacola, Florida. As the monkeys would have to fly in very confined capsules, they underwent extensive training in...
Ivan Ivanovich flies
For final confirmation of the capsule's systems, two more preliminary launches were scheduled, each planned for a single orbit and each carrying a single dog, a large payload of biological specimens and a life-sized mannequin cosmonaut, christened Ivan Ivanovich. The mannequin would be dressed in the same SK-1 pressure suit to be worn by the first cosmonaut. The first of these flights, Korabl-Sputnik 4, was launched on 9 March 1961, carrying the dog Chernushka, along with 40 black and 40 white...
Pchelka and Mushka
Accompanying the dogs Pchelka and Mushka on this flight would be a menagerie of living specimens, including guinea pigs, rats, mice and fruit flies, plus plants and other biological experiments. Different strains of mice and fruit flies were used to study the effects of cosmic radiation. Fruit fly varieties included those prone to both high and low mutation, with some to be shielded by lead and some not. As with KS-2, television cameras on KS-3 recorded the behaviour of the dogs during the...
First to volunteer
Eventually, the Headquarters of the Air Research and Development Command gave approval for human test runs to proceed at Holloman, and Stapp made all the necessary preparations. As he stated at the outset of his sled run experiments, he was desperate to find out What causes some men to die and others to survive crashes that occur under similar circumstances and with similar gravity impacts,'' and to uncover reasons for this apparent contradiction. It would also help in the development of more...
Able and Baker lead the way
1958 was a truly momentous year in the history of space exploration. Within the confines of those 12 months, America's first satellite, Explorer 1, was launched into orbit, while Russia retaliated by lobbing up a massive space laboratory known as Sputnik 3. On 2 April that year President Eisenhower had placed a proposal before Congress, calling for the creation of a civilian space agency to be known as NASA -the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A compromise bill was approved and...
Tsygan and Dezik lead the way
As 22 July approached, the day of the first launch, Yazdovskiy finally settled on the two dogs to make the historic flight Tsygan and Dezik, who had both demonstrated calmness and endurance through all the tests'' 7 . Along with Yazdovskiy's team, the dogs were shipped off to the launch site at Kapustin Yar. The Kapustin Yar site had been selected for its remoteness and certainly not for the amenities it offered the resident workers and VIP guests come to watch a launch. Return with victory the...
The chimps and Project Whoosh
Related work was continuing elsewhere. According to the NASA History Office, one Air Force research programme involving Holloman chimpanzees was known as Project Whoosh, which aimed to evaluate escape from a high speed aircraft at approximately Mach 2'' 18 . This involved strapping an anaesthetised chimpanzee into an open ejection seat, which was then secured inside a specially-modified Cherokee missile. The missile would then be carried aloft beneath the belly of a modified Boeing B-29...
Sent to the steppes
Meanwhile, in the last months of the war, the Soviet Union had been equally eager to appropriate German personnel and technology for their own purposes. Soviet trophy battalions combed through a ruined Germany in search of industrial equipment and materials. When Soviet forces captured the German rocket facility at Peenemunde in May 1945, they were discouraged by how thoroughly the Allies had cleared it of materials and personnel. However, in quick succession, they uncovered the underground...
Creating a Bioflight capsule
The heated Bioflight 1 capsule into which the prime candidate Old Reliable would be inserted and launched into space had been developed and tested at the School of Aviation Medicine, together with design assistance provided by the Army's Ballistic Missile Agency. The tapered, 292-pound fully-instrumented capsule, custom-built to contain Old Reliable's cylindrical container, was precisely manufactured to fit into the bottom section of the nose cone to allow for easy access. Covered with...
Figures
USAF monkey Sam Space, School of Aviation Medicine, Randolph AFB xxix Jules Verne's intrepid space explorers, US Library of Chimpanzees in training at Holloman AFB, USAF, NM Museum of Space History xlvi French space monkey Martine, Dr. G. Chatelier, Space dog Malyshka, authors' Laika, authors' German rocket pioneers in 1930, V-2 launch from Peenem nde, U.S. V-2 mock-up on a meillerwagen transporter, U.S. V-2 destruction in Antwerp, Belgium, A-4 V-2 Resource Von Braun with broken arm, U.S. V-2...
Acknowledgements
There are numerous people and organisations to whom we owe sincere thanks for their participation in this book. Some came to us unexpectedly, others responded to appeals for help on a number of online space forums, while still more readily replied to specific enquiries. A mere listing of names can in no way suggest our heartfelt gratitude towards these individuals. Without their interest and cooperation it would have been difficult, if not impossible at times, to collect, transcribe, organise...
From Research Rockets to the Space Shuttle
Mr Colin Burgess, BIS Bonnet Bay New South Wales Australia Mr Chris Dubbs Edinboro Pennsylvania USA SPRINGER-PRAXIS BOOKS IN SPACE EXPLORATION SUBJECT ADVISORY EDITOR John Mason, M.Sc., B.Sc., Ph.D. ISBN 10 0-387-36053-0 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York Springer is part of Springer-Science Business Media springer.com Library of Congress Control Number 2006937358 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the...