Science: Monkeys Through Space

The Jupiter take-off from Cape Canaveral last week was routine. The fat, 60-ft. IRBM rose from its pad, climbed through thin clouds, curved toward the southeast and vanished among the stars. No one was surprised; of the 20 Army Jupiters fired so far, only one has failed.

But in the roomy nose cone rode an extraordinary cargo: two young female monkeys, Able and Baker.* Monkey Able, a greyish, 6-lb. rhesus, was a graduate of a school at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington. D.C., where she and her classmates were taught to press a lever when a red light flashed. If the lever went unpressed, the monkeys got electric shocks in their furry behinds. Monkey Able was also conditioned to being strapped into a capsule, to wearing a miniature helmet and tolerating noise, vibration and the indignities attendant to the attaching of instruments to her body.

Contour Couch. Inside the nose cone, Monkey Able was dressed in a space suit and strapped to a carefully shaped contour couch of fiber-glass plastic. She wore gauze and charcoal diapers for daintiness. Since the g-forces of launching are much less (15 g) than those of hitting the atmosphere (38 g). she was suspended face down so that the bed would support her when the nose cone plunged back toward the earth. The capsule, a 250-lb. cylinder 41 in. long and 18 in. in diameter, contained a heating and cooling system and provided a change of air every 30 seconds. Before Abie’s eyes was the light that would flash red. and close to her skinny fingers was the button that she had been trained to push. Monkey Baker, a graduate of the Naval Aviation School of Medicine at Pensacola, was a fluffy South American squirrel-monkey weighing only 11 oz. Wearing a tiny helmet, she rode in a smaller cylindrical capsule and lay on a molded bed of silicone rubber covered for her comfort with a thin mattress of rubber foam.

To test the effects of radiation, the nose cone carried tubes containing living onion tissue, yeast cells, corn and mustard seeds, fruit flies, human blood (the donor: Captain William Augerson of the surgeon general’s office), and the eggs and sperm of sea urchins. Some of the eggs and sperm were arranged to be mixed during the flight, causing the first conception of earthly life in space for the later study of earth-bound scientists.

Telemetered Symptoms. As the Jupiter with its living cargo soared off, its transmitters radioed back a sheaf of telemetered information. Fourteen electronic channels reported the symptoms of Monkey Able, including her muscular reactions, heart sounds, temperature and respiration. There were only two failures: her electrocardiograph failed to work; at the last minute, the button that she was supposed to push had been disconnected before launch because the scientists found that it interfered electrically with other apparatus.

As medical men intently watched the graphs. Abie’s pulse quickened from a normal 140 beats per second to 175 during acceleration. But for Abie’s nine long minutes of weightlessness, her pulse was normal and steady. Under the 38-g stress of reentry, it rose to 222—high, but within acceptable bounds.

After 14 minutes Cape Canaveral lost radio touch. The nose cone was plunging into the atmosphere at the end of its flight, and as usual the hot trail of ionized air that re-entry produces blocked off radio waves.

A Little Sun. On a choppy sea 40 miles north of Antigua Island and more than 1,500 miles from Cape Canaveral, a small squadron of Navy vessels waited. Navy airplanes cruised overhead among the broken clouds. Lookouts on the tug Kiowa stared into the dark sky. From Florida over the radio came the Jupiter’s countdown ; Kiowa”s men counted the minutes, picturing the missile curving through space more than 300 miles up.

Then came an incredible sight—a dazzling, moving spark of light much brighter than the moon. It dodged behind clouds and out again, finally dividing into three parts: the spent body of the Jupiter, its guidance section, and the nose cone itself. Minutes later, a bright white light blinked on the sea about five miles from Kiowa. This was the light on a small balloon that had popped out of the nose cone. The shot had been perfect, hitting its target almost exactly. After the nose cone’s speed was checked somewhat by the upper atmosphere, a small, tough parachute checked its speed still more. Then a bigger parachute broke out. The cone floated easily down to the sea, released its balloon and a dose of shark repellent.

Mark on Top. As Kiowa steamed toward the blinking light, Navy airplanes dropped flares and circled with powerful searchlights pointing down under their wings. Each time a pilot passed over the cone, he called “Mark on top” through his radio. In 25 minutes Kiowa was close to the cone, and four frogmen scrambled into a rubber raft. Two of them, Lieut, (j.g.) Raymond E. Foy and Mineman 1/c Rodman Priestley, went into the water with Aqua-Lungs and made fast a wire strap to the nose cone. One shark circled the swimmers 40 ft. off, and Priestley brushed against a Portuguese manofwar, stinging his leg painfully. But otherwise there were no mishaps. The strap was attached to a heavy line. Kiowa’s crane hauled the cone close, hoisted it out of the water, lowered it gently to a mattress on her deck.

Scientists and technicians pressed about the cone. The hatch stuck. But after a struggle they got it open. Both monkeys were alive and apparently well. Reported a Kiowa officer: “They’re happy, healthy and eating.”

Kiowa headed for San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the monkeys were transferred to an airplane and flown to Washington. At a monster press conference, Able and Baker posed with no signs of shyness before a barrage of photographers’ flashbulbs. Baker’s little white jacket covered surgical scars made for the insertion of electrodes, but otherwise the pair seemed in fine shape.

Then they were both taken away to live out their natural lives under close observation as the first visitors to the undiscovered country of space, from whose bourn no traveler, until last week, had ever returned.

* Xamed by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration public-relations man who served in the Army 16 years ago. forgot that the first two letters of the military spoken alphabet have been changed to -‘Alpha” and “Bravo.” The impersonal names were chosen to ameliorate the wrath of professional animal lovers, but Monkey Baker, a furry, cuddlesome item, also picked up the unofficial laboratory nickname of TLC (for Tender Loving Care). Monkey Able was born in Kansas, a fact that NASA hopes will still a few cries in India, where her relatives are hardly less sacred than cows.