Trade.Information

Company Name: Space Medicine In Project Mercury

Company Type: Project Mercury

Company Profile

FOR CENTURIES MAN HAS DREAMED of exploring the universe. Finally an expanding rocket technology brought with it a reasonable expectation of achieving this dream, and man was quick to accept the challenge. Project Mercury was an organized expression of man's willingness to face the risks involved in exploring the new frontier of space, and of his confidence in our Nation’s ability to support him technically and professionally in this exciting adventure. Project Mercury is now legend. The story of its many activities is an important chapter in the history of our times. Its spotless record of successes is a tribute to all those who made up the Mercury team. Not the least of the groups composing the Mercury team was that charged with responsibility for the health of the astronauts. This select biomedical group discharged with near perfection a variety of tasks involved in choosing and training our Nations first space voyagers, monitoring their medical status during each flight, and finally assessing their condition after the flight. In this volume the author sets forth a chronological account of a unique medical support program. Flavored with personal glimpses of the individuals making up this global medical organization, the chronicle portrays the manner in which scientists and technicians drawn from the three military medical services, from other agencies of the Federal Government, and from the civilian community at large were welded into a smoothly functioning team. Led by a small group of NASA physicians, the members of this team performed their tasks in a way that makes difficult to believe that they were drawn from such widely divergent sources. Cast aside were all personal considerations and the parochialism so often found in members of traditionally competitive groups, particularly competitive professional groups. Indeed, their performance and singleness of purpose, their dedication and professional excellence, should give pause to those who sponsor ideologies other than the ones which form the basis for our democratic way of life. Only in a society of free men could one hope to find such an example of people banding together voluntarily to support a national goal. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is proud to have provided the vehicle for this demonstration of democracy in action.

About Company

THE DECISION OF THE UNITED STATES in 1958 to initiate a manned space flight program was based upon the confident assumption that technology could provide the life-support systems necessary for human survival in the hostile space environment. Primary responsibility for developing these flight systems obviously would rest with physical scientists and engineers. Bioastronautical exports, including flight surgeons who had long worked as a team with aeronautical engineers, believed from experience with conventional aircraft that man could sustain the combined stresses of space flight. It was believed that extension of the principles of traditional aviation medicine could provide the key to man's survival in the relatively short periods of space flight envisaged for Project Mercury. Thus, space medicine would represent basically an extension of aviation medicine. Both inside and outside the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration, some scientists were concerned about specific biomedical problems of early manned space flight. Definitive biological experimentation had not yet laid a solid basis for such a mission, even though it was recognized that Project Mercury would be but a first step and would not involve the obviously novel biological hazards of extended space flight. Engineers could cope with the hardware required for orbital flight, but the astronaut was more than a mere component of a system. He also had become a symbol of the hope that man himself could perform in extraterrestrial space. The confidence of the aerospace medical community and the skepticism of the biological scientists were to come together in the working out of the first U.S. manned space flights. NASA was charged by the President of the United States with carrying out a twofold mission in manned space flight. As a high national priority, ranking second only to national defense, NASA must at the earliest feasible time launch a man into space, provided with an environment in which he could perform effectively, and recover him safely. This was Project Mercury, with its relatively limited goal. Concurrently, NASA physical scientists and engineers, with the support of the Nation's leading life scientists, must develop a capability for extended manned space flight. Project Mercury could not define the biological and life support problems that may be posed by extended space missions, particularly prolonged weightlessness. Mercury flight times were limited by spacecraft weights which, in turn, were restricted by the capability of available launch vehicles. The theoretical literature on such conditions as weightlessness and combined physiological stresses must necessarily await validation by future flights. The task assigned Project Mercury was to prove that man could survive and function usefully in space. That fact has now been established. Whether or not the first U.S. manned space program, even with its limited goals, was worth the human risks involved was the subject of some debate within the scientific community. The final judgment must await the course of history. Some scientists are now seeking pilot ratings for future manned space flights, indicating their confidence in the more extensive flights that will take place in the near future. The present document is an attempt to record the way in which the medical community in particular, and the life scientists in general, provided clinical support for Project Mercury and, as a corollary, contributed toward the evolution of the long-range manned space-flight program. It is primarily a study in management, for only through the careful planning and management of the Nation's resource—together with dedicated effort—could Project Mercury have been accomplished in such a short time. It is a record of which the Nation can be proud, for the first U.S. manned space flights were successful against great odd—odds such as any pioneering effort must always overcome