I enjoyed working with the engineers who were wrestling with these problems. It required a lot of traveling, because there were different kinds of suits and backpacks and chestpacks, and they were made not in Houston but in far-off places like Connecticut and California and Delaware and Massachusetts. Since I was the astronaut office’s specialist, experimental pressure suits were made to my size, and I was required to wear them under various conditions to determine their comfort, reliability, and mobility. This work really kept me busy, hopping around the country from one meeting or test to another.
Some of the tests were fun, but others were just plain hard work. Whenever we wanted to simulate weightlessness, we flew in the back end of a Boeing KC-135, which was just like the rear of a commercial jet liner, except that all the seats had been removed and the walls had been padded. The KC-135 pilot would dive down, gain speed, and abruptly pull into a steep climb. Then he would push over, following an arc shaped like a parabola, and for about twenty seconds we and the airplane would fall together, temporarily weightless. During this twenty-second period, we would hurry through our tests. One of the most difficult was to try to get back inside the Gemini cockpit and close the hatch over your head. The Gemini was very small, and while weightless, I used to keep popping up out of the cockpit, like a cork out of a bottle. It took all my strength to bend that suit enough to wedge myself down in the seat so that there was enough clear space over my head to close the hatch. On a typical flight, we would stay up in the KC-135 and do forty or fifty parabolas. The first few times I tried it, it was fun, especially if I didn’t have to wear a pressure suit. Once we even dressed a friend up in a Superman suit and took pictures of him holding two other men at arm’s length and then throwing them up in the air. That was easy to do while all three were weightless. But after a while the KC-135 stopped being fun and became hard work. For one thing, it was usually quite hot inside the pressure suit, and after a couple of parabolas of strenuous work I would be breathing hard and sweating a lot. Sometimes I even got a little bit of claustrophobia, which is an awful feeling that you are trapped inside something and must get out. Of course, I was trapped inside the pressure suit; when I didn’t feel I was getting enough cool air to breathe, I would get a little panicky and raise the visor on my helmet to get a whiff of fresh air. That worried me because, of course, in space you couldn’t raise the visor without deflating the suit and dying. Another problem in the KC-135 was that the parabolas, and the pullouts between parabolas, tended to make you sick. I never got really sick myself, but the sight of a lot of engineers and photographers getting sick was not pleasant. It caused me to get a very queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Finally it got so bad that if someone came up behind me on the ground and whispered “KC-135” in my ear, my stomach would do a double back flip with a reverse twist.
A second torture chamber, worse than the KC-135, was the centrifuge. It was used to simulate the acceleration our bodies would feel during launch and reentry. Unlike weightlessness, it is easy to simulate the opposite condition, where the body “weighs” many times more than normal. The centrifuge, which we nicknamed the “Wheel,” does it simply by swinging you around in a circle. The faster you turn, the greater the centrifugal force pushing you into your seat, and the heavier you feel. Our centrifuge had a huge electric motor and a fifty-foot arm with a simulated spacecraft on its end. Built into a circular room, and controlled by a computer, the arm could be made to turn at whatever speed was necessary to imitate the loads we would experience under various flight conditions. The worst case was the deceleration an astronaut would feel if his rocket engine quit before he reached orbit, causing him to plunge back down into the atmosphere. We practiced, for brief instants, up to 15 Gs, which means that my 165-pound body would be pressed up against its seat with a force 15 times that of its weight, or a total of 2,475 pounds—over one ton! Fifteen Gs is not pleasant. In fact, I start feeling uncomfortable at about 8 Gs, with a pain developing in the center of my chest. At above 10 Gs, I have difficulty breathing. The problem is that it is easy to exhale, and to empty the lungs, but almost impossible to move the chest muscles to reinflate them. A new breathing technique is required, one in which the astronaut pants like a dog, and takes many short quick breaths “off the top” of his lungs, and never allows them to become completely deflated. Another problem at high Gs is that your vision is affected, and darkness closes in from the edges toward the center of your field of view. It’s called tunnel vision because, before you black out completely, for a while you seem to be looking down a tunnel and can see only those objects that are directly in front of you. Sometimes the forces on your body at high Gs cause tiny blood vessels to rupture, usually in your eyes, so the doctors examine you carefully after a ride on the “Wheel.” You feel the centrifuge for hours after you get off it, in a way that is totally unexpected: if you turn your head suddenly to the side, you feel quite dizzy. You also feel tired whether you turn your head or not. All in all, riding the “Wheel” is not a pleasant way to spend your days. I remember one time there was a competition between three different types of pressure suit, to see which one would be selected for the Apollo flights. All three were made to my dimensions, which meant that I was the only one who could test them on the KC-135 and the “Wheel.” Lucky me!
6
In June 1965 I really did get lucky. I was the first of our group of fourteen to be assigned to a flight crew. It was only a backup crew, which meant that I wouldn’t get to fly unless something happened to the prime crew, but I was really excited, nonetheless.
The flight was Gemini 7, and the prime crew were Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. The commander of the backup crew was Ed White, and I was to be his co-pilot. I had known Ed for many years, as we had been classmates at West Point. I also knew Frank Borman well, because he and I had sat at adjoining desks at the Test Pilot School. I had only known Jim Lovell for a year or so. Fortunately, I enjoyed being around all three of them, and they were a good group with whom to work. Ed White was a very good athlete, and he liked to start the day by running a couple of miles and ending it by playing handball or squash for an hour, followed by a sauna bath. A sauna isn’t really a bath at all; our sauna at Cape Kennedy was a small room with wooden walls, floor, and ceiling. We sat naked on wooden benches while an electric heater, buried under a pile of stones, heated the dry room to very high temperatures. After ten minutes or so at 170°, I would be red as a boiled lobster, but feeling good—relaxed, drowsy, and healthy. Often I needed the sauna to relax, because I was giving my brain a real workout. Frank, Jim, and Ed knew the Gemini spacecraft well, having spent months studying it while I was doing my pressure-suit work. Therefore, I had a lot of catching up to do. Gemini 7 was due to launch in a few months, and I had to be ready to fly it in case anything happened to Jim Lovell.
Ed White was a big help in explaining things to me. He had already flown in space once, aboard Gemini 4, and was our nation’s first space walker. His EVA had lasted only twenty minutes or so, but he had enjoyed it so much he had hated to get back inside the spacecraft and close the hatch. When he did, he found the hatch was stuck, and he had a difficult time closing it. Luckily, Ed was probably the strongest of all the astronauts; I don’t think some of the others would have been able to close it. But that was something we didn’t have to worry about on Gemini 7; there would be no EVA on this flight. It was a long-duration flight, and Frank and Jim were scheduled to stay up for two weeks, provided no machinery broke, and provided they seemed to be continuing in good health.
The idea behind Gemini 7 was that it would take over a week for an Apollo spacecraft to fly to the moon and back. No one knew what might happen to human beings who were weightless for that length of time, but we did know that if they became sick on the moon, that was bad, since it would take them at least three days to get home again. So the thought was to test people for longer than an Apollo flight, but to do it in earth orbit, where they could return to the ground quickly if necessary. Hence four
teen days for Frank and Jim; I thought that was really a very long time to spend inside the tiny Gemini cockpit. They would have more room sitting in the front seat of a Volkswagen. And their cramped Gemini cockpit was all they had, they couldn’t escape it. It was their office, study, living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, bath, and laboratory—all in one. Frank and Jim would really get to know one another as they circled the earth more than two hundred times, eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom, working—all within inches of each other.
I found that I couldn’t sit in the Gemini simulator for more than three hours before my back got sore and my legs became numb. Then how in the ever loving, blue-eyed world were Frank and Jim supposed to stand it for two whole weeks? The secret was weightlessness. There would be no gravity to squash their bodies against their seats. Instead, they would float free, unless they chose to remain strapped down. Therefore, their backs shouldn’t get sore or their legs numb—but I still think that is an awfully long time for two people to be locked up inside such a small enclosure. I am five feet ten inches tall. Inside a Gemini, I can touch my head against the hatch and my feet against the floorboards at the same time, without having to stretch. Sitting in the right seat, I can easily reach over and touch the left wall.
Weightlessness might be good for the body in terms of comfort, but it was thought to be harmful to the heart, muscles, and skeleton. The reason is that the body would not have to fight against gravity, and would therefore become weakened. For example, a lot of the heart’s work comes from the fact that gravity tends to cause the blood to pool in the lower part of the body, and the heart has to pump it “uphill” against the pull of gravity. In space, with no gravity, there is no “up” or “down” for the heart, and when it pumps, it has an easier job, having only to overcome the resistance of the veins and arteries. The muscles of the body also find their job easier, especially the leg muscles, which no longer have to hold a heavy body “up.” In similar fashion, the skeleton finds it doesn’t have to support any weight. When parts of the body aren’t used, they tend to weaken, or shrink, or atrophy. The heart in space gets lazy, muscles decrease in size, and bones lose some of their calcium. In 1965 no one knew how bad these effects might be, after two weeks in space, and it was Frank and Jim’s job to find out.
Much later, in 1973 and 1974, Project Skylab kept men in orbit for as long as eighty-four days, without harming them. The Skylab astronauts found that exercise was very important in keeping their bodies strong, and they liked to exercise for at least an hour a day. Of course, Skylab was a huge spacecraft and it was easy to exercise by riding a bicycle bolted to the floor, or by running around and around the walls. But in the tiny Gemini that was not possible; about all Frank and Jim could do was pull on a heavy elastic cord. They could loop it around their feet and then pull up with their arms and shoulders, stretching it as far as they could. In 1965, people weren’t sure whether pulling on a rubber cord was going to help the heart any or not; in fact, even the astronauts weren’t in agreement on the importance of physical conditioning. Some astronauts thought that since a trip into space would cause their hearts to get lazy, perhaps they should relax beforehand and not get much exercise. Others thought that if their bodies were going to weaken in space, they should start out as strong as possible, and that meant exercise.
I agreed with that idea, although I didn’t think that I needed to spend hours a day exercising. It wasn’t at all like being a professional athlete. It was just that the body should be healthy and lean, and the heart muscle should be strong. There are various ways of increasing your body’s endurance, and they all involve putting a steady and sustained load on the heart muscle. Swimming and riding a bicycle for long distances are two good examples. Another is jogging, or running, and that is the method I prefer. The experts don’t agree on how far one must run to get one’s heart in good condition, but, generally, the longer the distance, the better. Speed is not very important. Personally, I find that if I run two miles at a time, four times a week, then the doctors who give me physical exams say that I am keeping my heart muscle in good condition. Since this amount of running only takes an hour a week, I think that it is time very well spent. I notice that if I don’t do it, I don’t feel as well, and I tend to get tired more easily.
Another important factor in physical conditioning is smoking. Smoking is really bad. It is about the most stupid habit known to man. It causes lung cancer and other diseases, and it decreases the endurance of heart and lungs. It’s not that much fun either. I used to smoke a lot, for years and years, and I got to the point that I didn’t really enjoy it at all, but I couldn’t think about much else if I didn’t have a cigarette every half hour or so. I was addicted to it. Since I stopped smoking, I feel much better, and I don’t have to worry about setting my bed on fire (yes, I did that one time). Best of all, I know I am doing my body a big favor.
The effects of smoking on the body are becoming well known, but the effects of space flight were largely unknown in 1965. We knew that the body has its own internal “clock” that tells it when to become tired and when to wake up. Called the circadian rhythm, this clock is geared to the place where you have been living recently. If you live in Houston and take a trip to the other side of the world, your body will want to go to sleep when it is late at night in Houston, even though it may be broad daylight where you are. In earth orbit, it takes ninety minutes to go around once. During this hour and a half, the astronaut will see one sunrise, one noontime, one sunset, and one midnight. Does that mean he will get sleepy at dusk and wake up at dawn? No. His internal clock doesn’t work that way. The body ignores the fact that its eyes are seeing a ninety-minute day-to-night cycle. It clings to the familiar twenty-four-hour cycle, so that the astronaut becomes sleepy when it is his normal bedtime in Houston, regardless of what he sees out his window. For this reason, we tried to program our activities in space for between 8 a.m. and midnight, Houston time. Of course, we couldn’t always do that. Sometimes things take a certain length of time, and they cannot be speeded up. For example, if you fly from the earth to the moon, it may just turn out that you arrive at the moon at 4 a.m. Houston time, and you wouldn’t want to be asleep for that! On the early Gemini flights, we were worried about the machinery breaking, and so we decided it would be a good idea for one of the two men to be awake at all times. Not only was this arrangement bad for the astronaut’s circadian rhythm, but the astronaut who was on duty made enough noise as he went about his work to keep his partner awake. After a couple of days of this, the crew would really be tired. On Gemini 7, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell were going to change this procedure. They would schedule their work together. Then when their wristwatches told them it was bedtime in Houston, they would put thin metal plates over their two windows to block out the sun, and both would go to sleep, trusting the spacecraft not to break during the time they were asleep.
Heart muscles and circadian rhythms were interesting things to know about, but they were not the most important things, as far as we astronauts were concerned. We were most concerned about understanding the spacecraft, which was a very complicated bundle of machinery—any part of which could break. If something went wrong, what could we do about it? We tried to be reasonable and consider only the most likely possible failures. Even doing that, we filled books full of procedures for coping with emergencies. Most of the time, if something failed, we could take our sweet time in fixing the problem, but not always. During descent, for example, if the Gemini’s parachute did not come out when scheduled, the astronauts really had to hurry to try other ways to get the chute out or, failing that, to eject themselves.
I understood that. Once I had had to eject from a burning airplane, and I knew that the procedures had to be memorized and be very clear in your mind. An ejection seat is simply the aluminum seat the pilot sits in, with a small rocket motor built into the back of it. When the airplane is about to crash or blow up, the pilot can fire the rocket, which blasts him—still strapped in his cha
ir—free of the airplane. Of course, it’s not all that simple. In the F-86 Sabrejet (which was the airplane from which I ejected), you first had to disconnect your oxygen hose and radio cord, then bend over and jettison the canopy. Bending over was important; otherwise, the canopy would hit you in the head as it departed the airplane. Once the canopy was gone, you had to sit upright with your head back against the seat and squeeze a trigger in the right arm of the seat to blast you out of there. Sitting up straight was very important; otherwise, you might break your back when the seat fired. Then, as soon as you were free of the airplane, tumbling end over end, unable to see because of the wind blast in your eyes, you had to reach down and unbuckle the seat belt, kick away from the seat, and open your parachute by pulling a D-shaped ring on your left chest. Getting rid of the seat was very important. If you did not, the parachute would probably not open. All these things had to be done swiftly and correctly the first time. The time in the F-86, everything had gone well. There was a muffled explosion, my cockpit started to fill up with smoke, and my wingman told me I was on fire. I ran through the ejection procedures, and everything worked as advertised, except that the ground rushed up so fast I wasn’t prepared for it. My body was in the wrong position when I hit, and I tumbled over backward with all the grace of a bag of potatoes. Luckily, I landed in a farmer’s soft plowed field and was not hurt.
Flying to the Moon Page 5
