Mercury MK II 6Spacecraft:S/C-6 Launch Vehicle: Titan II Scheduled Launch: 1 Jan 1964 Last Scheduled: 14 Aug 1961 |
Prime Crew |
Description: 1st Gemini Titan II chimpanzee orbital |
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Backup Crew |
not assigned
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On 14 August 1961 the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation proposed a series of 14 Mercury Mark II flights. The sixth flight would have flown a chimpanzee on a long-duration biomedical mission. A revised proposal on 30 August 1961 did not include such a mission. Following the flight of Enos on Mercury Atlas 5, the astrochimps disappeared from pubic interest and from history. Not all of the names of the chimpanzees who trained for spaceflight are known; indeed, some of them may not have been given names. Ham, who flew on Mercury Redstone 2, was known as No. 65 before his flight, and only renamed "Ham" upon his successful return to earth. This was reportedly because officials did not want the bad press that would come from the death of a "named" chimpanzee if the mission were a failure. Among his handlers, No.65 had been known as Chop Chop Chang. There were originally 40 chimpanzee flight candidates at Holloman Air Force Base ("Ham" was actually an acronym for "Holloman AeroMedical"). After evaluation the number of candidates was reduced to 18, then to six. Aside from Ham and Enos, four other names are known, and it may be that these were the other four finalists. Minnie, who was the backup on both Mercury Redstone 2 and Mercury Atlas 5, as well as the apparent prime for the canceled Mercury Atlas 6, was one of four females in Colony 1 in quarters behind Hangar S at Cape Canaveral. Other Mercury-trained chimpanzees included Duane, Jim, and Rocky. It should be remembered that the astrochimps were not mere passengers or live payload; they were crew, albeit nonhuman, and despite the fact that obviously they did not pilot their spacecraft (although NASA's official history of Project Mercury refers to them as "pilots"). They were trained extensively to perform tasks during their missions, and aerospace medicine evaluated their performance as indicators of how spaceflight might affect the performance of human astronauts. In terms of being mission-essential, on a human scale the astronaut chimpanzees would rank above spaceflight participants; the closest equivalent human position would be payload specialist. When viewed in this way, it is an irony that as pilot of Mercury Atlas 6, John Glenn followed payload specialist Enos's Mercury Atlas 5 into space, on his second flight 36 years later he served as a payload specialist on STS-95. References:
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