Deja Vu

July 15, 2009

Cooped Up

Tags:

NASA,

spaceflight,

technology,

transportation

“Men Emerge from Mars Experiment,” BBC News, July 14, 2009.

Six European volunteers have emerged from a simulated space capsule in Moscow after spending more than three months locked inside.

They were part of an experiment into how astronauts might deal with the very cramped conditions and prolonged isolation of a journey to Mars.

The four Russians, a German and a Frenchman seemed none the worse for wear after their "trip".

The capsule, without windows, had never left the ground during the 105 days.

It was designed to make them feel as isolated as they would be on a real trip to Mars, including very cramped accommodation and radio communication delayed by up to 20 minutes.

Just before coming out on Tuesday, the German member of the group admitted that he had completely lost all track of time.

“Suitcase for a Fortnight,” from On the Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, The NASA Historical Series, 1977.
Gemini VII launched from Florida on Dec. 4, 1965, and splashed down in the Atlantic on Dec. 18. Until the Skylab Missions of the 1970s, Gemini VII was notable as the longest spaceflight in American history.

Frank Borman and James Lovell had put in long hours getting ready to spend two weeks in space. Working directly with the Gemini IV pilots and talking with the crew of Gemini V, Borman and Lovell learned much about what to take with them and how to prepare themselves physically and psychologically. They already knew the spacecraft systems, but they needed to figure out how to live in such confined quarters for so long and still perform useful work. As successful as the preceding missions had been, they still wondered if six extra days could be safely added to the flight. Edward White and James McDivitt had been fatigued; Cooper and Conrad tired and bored. Both crews stressed the impossibility of sleeping alternately. Borman and Lovell resolved to sleep and work together.

The astronauts and mission planners had learned another lesson from Gemini IV and V. Prescribing tasks for assigned times during a flight was useless. So Borman and Lovell would take off with what was, in essence, a flight plan outline. Experiments and other tasks would be carried out only when the flight controllers and crew could fit the job to the opportunity. The only prescheduled tasks fell between launch and stationkeeping, the first four hours of a 330-hour mission.

Another innovation that the crew welcomed was adjusting the sleep-eat-work-relax cycle to their more normal, Earthbound habits. Borman and Lovell had two work periods each day, coinciding with morning and afternoon in the United States Central Standard Time zone. This schedule also fitted the specialized activities of the three flight controller shifts - to execute the flight plan, to analyze systems performance and the supply of consumables, and to keep up with what had been done and plan the next segment of activities.

Stowage of food and gear was a special problem on a two-week flight. Unfinished meals and food wrappers could quickly clutter up the spacecraft, as Cooper and Conrad had learned in the eight day mission. Extra storage space in the small cabin had to be found before the 14-day trip. GPO Deputy Manager Kenneth Kleinknecht went with Borman and Lovell to St. Louis, where Spacecraft 7 was going through its test phases, to help them hunt for more space. The search for an extra garbage dump was successful: waste paper from their meals could go behind Borman's seat for the first seven days and behind Lovell's for the next seven. After working out procedures, the crew practiced stowing for launch, orbit, and reentry, until they were sure they knew where to put every scrap of paper.

Tailoring flight and stowage plans for a 14-day mission was important, but even more significant was a newly tailored space suit to make Gemini VII more livable. In early June 1965, McDonnell started a test program to see if astronauts could ride almost suitless in space. Gordon Cooper and Elliot See, wearing standard Air Force flight suits (with medical monitoring plugs, helmets wired for Gemini communications fittings, and oxygen masks connected to emergency bottles), flew in the altitude (vacuum) chamber in St. Louis to simulated heights of 36,000 meters. Both astronauts were elated over the results, but McDonnell personnel were uneasy - in actual flight, the cabin temperature might go too high. At an MSC-McDonnell management meeting the next month, McDonnell was asked to study another possibility. James V. Correale of the Crew Systems Division had suggested using a lightweight pressure garment similar in operation to a G3C intravehicular suit. Although this soft suit would not allow pilots to complete a mission if the cabin lost oxygen pressure, it would provide them enough margin of safety to get to a recovery area…

To produce a more comfortable suit, the David Clark Company removed as much corsetry as possible from the 10.7-kilogram (23 1/2-pound) Gemini pressure suit. The suit was designed to be removed during flight without requiring too much energy or space. A soft cloth hood - which used zippers, as opposed to a neck ring, for fastening to the torso portion - replaced the fiber glass shell helmet. The contractor, working with MSC's Crew Systems Division, managed to cut suit weight by a third, but the 7.3-kilogram (16-pound) suit was still somewhat heavy. In evaluation and training sessions, however, Borman and Lovell found the new garment handy. The soft hood could be zipped open, and the complete suit could be removed and laid on the side of the seats, without having to be stowed away…

Gemini VII carried more experiments than any other flight in the program. Because it was the last long-duration mission, its medical experiments were particularly important in assessing man's capabilities for the lunar landing program. Of 20 experiments, eight were medical, a higher ratio than in any other Gemini flight.

Two of the medical experiments - calcium balance study and inflight sleep analysis - were better suited to a clinic than to a small spacecraft cabin and were viewed with something less than enthusiasm by the crew. Even the name of the "Inflight Electroencephalogram" (EEG) experiment made the astronauts a little nervous. Although it was merely a study of sleeping habits in Gemini, the EEG was normally used to diagnose subtle disturbances such as incipient epilepsy and brain tumors. But some specialists believed brain wave recording could offer more information, and the astronauts were understandably wary of how the results might be interpreted. Changing the name to "Inflight Sleep Analysis" solved only half their problem. Since normal hair growth would dislodge the scalp sensors after 48 hours, the information had to be gathered at the worst possible time the first night, when most people have difficulty sleeping in a new environment, anyway. Borman and Lovell also turned a jaundiced eye on the calcium balance study. It was a nuisance because they had to keep a complete record of body intake and wastes for 9 days before the flight, 14 days during it, and 4 days afterward. Before and after the mission, a nutritionist from the National Institutes of Health limited the items they could eat and drink and weighed out their meals in grams. Almost a month of this regimen did not appeal to the crew…

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