Science: Space Pioneer

The caravan of eight vehicles circled to a stop in the morning fog that lay on the floor of the open-pit Minnesota iron mine. With swift precision, the coveralled men of the launching crew lowered an eight-foot metal capsule—an elongated vacuum bottle—to the crater floor and attached to it a gigantic (280 ft. high), pear-shaped polyethylene balloon. Within the capsule, a balding Air Force space surgeon named Dave Simons stirred impatiently in his tight little world.

So began last week a modern adventure of man against the sky. The Air Force’s aim: to suspend one man at 100,000 ft. for 24 hours and chart his reactions—body and psyche—against the textbook theories of life in space.

“Not Die Once.” The Air Force had a robust guinea pig to send higher for longer than man had ever gone before.* Both physician and physicist, Major Simons, 35, is one of the nation’s top space medicinemen. Training for his mission, he had logged 63 hours of manned balloon flight, sealed himself in a capsule up to 26 hours, and made a parachute jump. Last June he supervised the trial ascent to 96,000 ft. by Captain Joe W. Kittinger, fighter pilot (TIME, June 17). On the ground, Space Surgeon Colonel John Stapp had drilled Simons for hours on simulated emergencies. Says Stapp: “After several weeks Dave could sit in a gondola, handle 20 emergencies and not die once.”

When he rose out of the iron mine at 1,200 ft. per minute, Dr. Simons was as safe as science could make him. His heart beat and respiration rate were radioed directly from his chest to a monitoring physiologist. Film strapped to his forearms and chest would pick up the tracks of any cosmic particles that might crash through to his skin. A C-47 with a paramedic aboard started to track his flight. Down below, radar blips traced his path and a meteorologist turned a weather eye on the heavens. To help science, Simons carried along a good-luck charm from his wife bearing an outline of the moon and the inscription: “When you land here, it’s time to return.” Heading for the moon, Simons clicked his cameras, chatted into his tape recorder, took dozens of readings with 500 lbs. of scientific gear, and radioed back a confident message: “I’m having fun.”

New View, New Facts. By noon, Simons was up to about 102,000 ft. (exact height is still being checked) and looked upon a view no man had seen before. The horizon was 400 miles away. Overhead the sky was dark. The earth was a lifeless blob delicately dissected by rivers and lakes. Reported Sightseer Simons: “It was as though all the color had been washed out.”

Drifting toward South Dakota, Simons recorded three facts that challenge man’s notions of the upper atmosphere: ¶ The sky above him was completely dark at high noon, but he could not see any stars or planets. Therefore, contrary to expectations, aviators of the future may not be able to rely on daytime celestial navigation.

¶ Simons’ instruments picked up traces of moisture at 70,000 ft., the first time it had been noted above 50,000 ft. This means that the next generation of fighters and bombers will be followed by the same path-tracing vapor trails that dogged aircraft in World War II.

¶ Simons saw thunderclouds (cumulonimbus) approaching 68,000 ft., some 25,000 ft. higher than meteorologists had been able to trace them before at his latitude.

“Let’s Continue.” That night, after the earth was dark, Simons’ balloon still shone with reflected sunlight. Through his porthole windows, he stared at the most impressive sight of his life: a stratosphere sunset. Checking the changing shades against a spectrum chart, he radioed a fervid description back to earth, once excitedly described a shade as “purplish blue blue.” Said he: “There’s no color on. this chart to match it. No sunset on earth was ever so beautiful.”

The night also brought danger. Far below, thunderstorms were moving in from the west. The tracking C-47 could not climb through the weather to follow the balloon, and radar was useless. The radio that reported Simons’ heartbeat and respiration rate had died, and the main radio seemed to be weakening. Calmly, Dr. Stapp told Dr. Simons the news: if he stayed up he would have to monitor his own pulse and breathing, take his own position checks and thus could not risk more than a short nap. Answered Simons: “Let’s continue the flight.”

“Nothing but Quiet.” As the night wore on, the helium in his balloon cooled and contracted, and Simons began to drop at 500 ft. a minute toward the storms that looked as harmless as tiny powder-puffs. Soon the balloon was down to 68,400 ft., and the temperature inside the gondola dropped to 34° F. Simons pulled on a warming suit over his figure-hugging space suit, dumped some ballast (including two spent batteries), and climbed back to safety. An hour before sunrise, he radioed a plea to the ground: “I’ve got to get some sleep!” Permission was granted; the gondola, conditioned by pressurized oxygen, helium and nitrogen, was awesomely hushed. “It’s like no earthly quiet,” he reported. “On earth there are always traffic sounds and dogs barking or the wind just whistling. But in space there’s nothing but quiet.” He leaned his head forward against his chest-pack parachute and promptly dropped off to sleep. (Back home in Alamogordo, N. Mex., Simons’ wife and four children were camping out in the backyard “so we could be under the stars with daddy.”)

Thirty minutes later, when his monitors woke him by radio, it was dawn. Methodically, Dr. Simons recorded the colors in his notebook (the sun flashed green) and took a urine specimen. By mid-morning the sun had warmed the inside wall of the gondola to 120° F. But the air of the capsule was cooled to 60°-65° by a compact air conditioner.

“Down with Simons.” As Simons finally started to descend. Stapp detected a slur in his voice. “What is your respiration, Dave?” Stapp asked. Simons’ count: a fast 44 breaths a minute. “Check your carbon dioxide,” radioed Stapp. Simons’ reading: the carbon dioxide in the capsule’s air was an alarming 4% (3% is dangerous).

Simons, Stapp and Balloon Designer Otto Winzen spotted the trouble immediately. The capsule’s air regeneration system was weakening. Simons quickly clamped shut the visor of his space helmet and breathed oxygen from the emergency supply. After 15 minutes the regeneration system had lowered the carbon dioxide level of the capsule to a safe 2%. For the rest of the flight, Simons alternated between breathing the capsule’s air and the emergency supply of oxygen. Suddenly the strain of the long flight began to tell on the major. One moment Simons was excitedly describing the clouds (“a white table top”), the next he was fumbling through readings he had been making with ease. Cracked Stapp: “Gentlemen, I don’t mean to sound derogatory, but down with Simons, I say.”

Nursing his oxygen supply, Simons settled heavily to earth in a soft, loamy field ten miles from Frederick, S. Dak., 405 miles from his take-off point near Crosby, Minn. He had spent 16 of his 32 hours aloft over 90,000 ft. Teen-agers gawked and a farmer soothed a rearing horse as Simons—haggard and bearded but unharmed—stepped back into the world. Minutes later he was sound asleep, stretched across three seats of a shepherding helicopter. His observations, including 5½ hours of taped comments to himself, 25 hours of recorded conversation with the ground, a large notebook filled with impressions, will keep space scientists busy for weeks hunting answers to the questions posed by space flight. At week’s end, a grateful Air Force gave Space Pioneer Simons the Distinguished Flying Cross for so plainly answering the most important question of all. Summed up Space Surgeon Stapp: “It is safe for man to fly to outer space.”

*Captain Iven C. Kincheloe Jr. set the world’s altitude record for manned flight last September when he flew the Bell X-2 rocket plane to 126,000 ft., but he held that height for only a moment.