A Subject I Almost MISSed, Part 1

FYI: As you may know I really enjoy reading books about space, namely the Apollo program. In this series, I will share with you some stories and titles of the space books I have read this school year. It is so long I will break it down into 5 parts, posting one per week. :) ~Photobug

Maybe it’s the adventure and excitement of going to another world. Or perhaps it’s the element of unknown. But anyways, the story of Project Apollo is one of my all-time favorites.

This past May I wrote an article describing the different space-related books I had read over the past 5 some months. And right here I’m going to do it again….I have not run out of books to read! ;)

In July I decided to see for myself what Apollo books our university library might have, as I had (thought) I had exhausted our public library’s Apollo books.

And what do you know? At our university library I find tons of space books I haven’t read yet…at least a dozen! So, one book at a time…

First I read Flight: My Life in Mission Control. It’s Chris Kraft’s autobiography. He was one of the main key guys when NASA just was getting started…like back in 1959. Kraft ended up being the flight director for Mercury and about half of Gemini. (The Flight Director was the main guy in Mission Control making all the decisions. Kraft entitled his book Flight because during a mission the flight director was referred to as “Flight”.) It was amazing to read about Mercury and Gemini, subjects I knew almost nothing about. Previously I had read only books on Apollo. Anyway, Flight was totally awesome…and 355 pages. :D

As you may know, I really like finding really cool or funny tidbits of information about the U.S. space program and then tell them to people I meet. I found quite the funny story in Flight. (I also found this story in the book Animals in Space.) Anyway, Kraft told of NASA employee Guenter Wendt and a relentless Congressman. This was in the days when NASA was sending chimpanzees into space before the astronauts. Anyway, among many there were two space chimps named Enos and Ham.


Ham was in training, and Enos had just come out. And Enos, well, did not really like people visiting him. The storyline went something like this…a certain Congressman wearing a white shirt came down to the Cape and told Wendt that he wanted to see one of the chimps. Wendt responded that (I’m paraphrasing) “it might not be a good idea. Ham is in training, and Enos just got out.” The Congressman persisted. Finally the Wendt led the Congressman into the building to Enos.

Now you must understand something. When the chimps saw someone coming towards them, they associated that with more training. Ham and Enos did not like training. And Enos had just gotten out of training. So when Enos sees two people walking towards him, he was not happy at all. Being a chimp, he thought up the perfect solution to the problem. Enos deposited a little something (I’ll leave you to guess what) and threw it straight at the congressman…landing right on his nice, clean white shirt!

All Wendt could say was that “you know, these are unpredictable chimps!”

Did you ever wonder how NASA got the chimps to do what they wanted? While I know there was a lot of training, there was a simple system in the cockpit. If the chimp did the right thing, he would get a banana pellet! If he did the wrong thing, he would get a slight shock on his foot. I thought this was really interesting!

With chimps being sent up before humans, the newspapers coined a cute headline: “First the chimp, then the chump!” Alan Shepard did not like this at all!

Poor Ham. He finally got to go into space, but his flight went wacko. The Redstone booster ate up its fuel too quickly, and an escape rocket hurled Ham and his capsule away from the Redstone in an abort. During this part of the flight Ham suffered up to 17 G’s!!!! With the fuel shortage, abort, etc. Ham’s capsule went higher than anticipated. This meant he came down into the water many miles away from where NASA had predicted. It took the recovery forces about half hour to find Ham and his capsule. Thankfully they did, and recovered a happy primate.

In between reading Flight and my next space book, our family took a vacation to California. We had an awesome family reunion, and it was just great seeing everyone under one roof again. Anyway, while we were in California I watched my grandparent’s copy of the movie Apollo 13. This movie has been out for a long time…15 years I think. It was directed by Ron Howard and starred Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13. I was really really impressed with Apollo 13. It was very realistic—there’s only maybe one thing that’s in the movie but not in real life. The movie was not as scary as I had thought it would be. (This past February I read Jim Lovell’s own account of the mission in his autobiography, Lost Moon. Knowing how the story turns out helps a lot!)

My next book to read was entitled Two Sides of the Moon, a dual autobiography by American astronaut Dave Scott and Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. 398 pages, it was an absolutely fascinating book.

Dave Scott was one of the Gemini astronauts, and alongside Neil Armstrong was the crew of Gemini 8. The flight plan for Gemini 8 was to dock with an already orbiting Agenda rocket, and also for Scott to do a space walk. Check! As Armstrong and Scott docked with the Agenda it was perfect…until the capsule started twirling and revolving about once per second! Mission Control had no clue what to do. Gemini 8 was in grave, fatal danger.

To be continued....