Fifty years ago, there was a space race -- a race the United States was losing to the communists.
Enter a hero, named Ham. The chimp would become the first hominid launched into outer space. And Ham wasn't just a passenger. He was taught to push a button once the light for re-entry came on. His mission set the stage for the one Alan Shepard would make May 5, 1961, aboard Freedom 7.
Marvin Grunzke of Montgomery, once an Air Force aeromedical specialist, holds a photo of Ham, the first chimp to be launched into space. Grunzke helped train Ham. (David Bundy Advertiser)
Monday is the 50th anniversary of when Ham the "astrochimp" launched into suborbital space inside a Mercury capsule.
And the chimpanzee's trainer, Marvin Grunzke -- a retired Air Force colonel and Faulkner University professor -- will discuss his work and experiences Monday at Dalraida United Methodist Church.
"Nobody had been in space, so nobody knew anything," Grunzke said.
But at the time, John F. Kennedy had became president, and announced that the country would make "space our project," said Grunzke, 87, "and that we're going to the moon.
"What was significant about it was, we had just sent a missile up that had difficulty carrying a basketball-sized space lobe," he said. "So our capability for space was pretty dramatic."
In October 1958, Grunzke and his wife, Eunice, lived at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Grunzke was working in an "unusual environments program," testing people and subjects in all types of environmental conditions.
One evening, Grunzke witnessed Sputnik -- although he wasn't sure whether it was Sputnik, or Sputnik 2, which carried Laika, a Soviet space dog.
The dog became the first animal to or- bit the Earth and the first orbital death.
"They had enough missile power to send that into space," Grunzke said. "And we didn't."
At that time -- the late 1950s -- there were only five people working in NASA, and they needed help. So the government approached the Air Force.
Grunzke was then an Air Force major and aeromedical specialist at Wright Patterson, and was requested by NASA to transfer to New Mexico to be a key trainer in the "animals in space" program.
After Grunzke worked for a couple of years to help develop training and data recording equipment and to train different animals, the chimp was selected and trained for space travel experimentation because the chimpanzees share common physical attributes with humans.
But there wasn't enough power in the capsule to carry anything too heavy, so the chimp could not weigh more than 30 pounds.
It was an exciting time for Grunzke, whose design developments -- including the chimp's chair, a restraint system, and even a pellet dispenser to hold treats -- took longer to complete than it did to train chimps, which only took a couple of weeks.
"They needed the chimps to have full movements, and only restrained them at the knee and ankles," Grunzke said. "We needed to assure the subject would respond, and reward them for good behavior.
"All of these things reflected the fact that we had to combine new technology and subjects new to us. We worked hard so we were able to stay ahead."
Grunzke said they developed two programs.
One, was a "continuous avoidance action" in which the chimp was required to continuously press the lever on a consistent basis.
"And they developed a nice schedule," he said. "They just sat there and kept pressing the lever. But another thing is ... we wanted to test to see if they had a good reflex response.
"So we developed another lever with a light over it, and it would come on in random intervals and the subject would have a quick time to respond. So they would be working the right-hand lever on a continuous basis and the left-hand lever would be on a single basis and (they) wouldn't respond to it except for when that light came on so we could test reaction times."
This helped researchers test their response time and their reflexes. Both were important because in both instances subjects were responding to avoid punishment. If needed, the punishment was saucer-type plates in the chimp's feet that would send a slight electric shock if needed.
They never failed.
"I don't have any regrets, because I know that there were things we had to do," Grunzke said of the punishment possibility. "There were things we had to do for the behavior to be maintained."
The researchers had to learn whether living things -- and eventually a human being -- could handle the rigors of space, said Grunzke, a professor of physiological psychology and behavioral statistics at Faulkner University for the past 15 years.
"We could see the subject was responding, and working accordingly," he said.
At one point during the short mission, though, Ham experienced 16 forces of gravity -- now, astronauts experience only three to four forces of gravity.
"When you have that kind of force, we learned we could literally do this," Grunzke said. "It showed them that man could do this as well.
"Because of the similarity between the chimp and the human, we could draw an extraction from that and show this could be a similar situation for humans."
In the end, Ham's suborbital flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds, and while the capsule he was in suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm.
"As a result of that, a kind of mis-programming of the Ham missile, we were able to gain some very valuable information about what humans could or could not do under very adverse acceleration and deceleration issues," Grunzke said.
When first approached to help with the animal in space program, Grunzke was excited.
"If we stop to think about it, and you have to project yourself back to think about it -- (back then we didn't) even have the capability to send a grapefruit-sized (object) into space, and we were going to send animals into space," he said. "And they would be a precursor to man."
This was so exciting to Grunzke that he designed a program that demonstrated that animals could be trained to steer a missile.
"I did that because if we wanted to shoot a space flight to the moon, we would maybe have to steer the missile," he said. "The whole purpose was that we could steer a capsule into the atmosphere. The timeframe was such that we were just developing transistors. Everything that we did was on big relay racks" -- designed to program the schedules so he could switch and vary the schedule."
Grunzke considers himself generously blessed.
"I always say I have been generously blessed," Grunzke said. "There's not a whole lot that I did, but the Lord watched out for me.
"What we did was minimal things, but it opened the door."
After Grunzke worked for a couple of years to help develop training and data recording equipment and to train different animals, the chimp was selected and trained for space travel experimentation because the chimpanzees share common physical attributes with humans.
But there wasn't enough power in the capsule to carry anything too heavy, so the chimp could not weigh more than 30 pounds.
It was an exciting time for Grunzke, whose design developments -- including the chimp's chair, a restraint system, and even a pellet dispenser to hold treats -- took longer to complete than it did to train chimps, which only took a couple of weeks.
"They needed the chimps to have full movements, and only restrained them at the knee and ankles," Grunzke said. "We needed to assure the subject would respond, and reward them for good behavior.
"All of these things reflected the fact that we had to combine new technology and subjects new to us. We worked hard so we were able to stay ahead."
Grunzke said they developed two programs.
One, was a "continuous avoidance action" in which the chimp was required to continuously press the lever on a consistent basis.
"And they developed a nice schedule," he said. "They just sat there and kept pressing the lever. But another thing is ... we wanted to test to see if they had a good reflex response.
"So we developed another lever with a light over it, and it would come on in random intervals and the subject would have a quick time to respond. So they would be working the right-hand lever on a continuous basis and the left-hand lever would be on a single basis and (they) wouldn't respond to it except for when that light came on so we could test reaction times."
This helped researchers test their response time and their reflexes. Both were important because in both instances subjects were responding to avoid punishment. If needed, the punishment was saucer-type plates in the chimp's feet that would send a slight electric shock if needed.
They never failed.
"I don't have any regrets, because I know that there were things we had to do," Grunzke said of the punishment possibility. "There were things we had to do for the behavior to be maintained."
The researchers had to learn whether living things -- and eventually a human being -- could handle the rigors of space, said Grunzke, a professor of physiological psychology and behavioral statistics at Faulkner University for the past 15 years.
"We could see the subject was responding, and working accordingly," he said.
At one point during the short mission, though, Ham experienced 16 forces of gravity -- now, astronauts experience only three to four forces of gravity.
"When you have that kind of force, we learned we could literally do this," Grunzke said. "It showed them that man could do this as well.
"Because of the similarity between the chimp and the human, we could draw an extraction from that and show this could be a similar situation for humans."
In the end, Ham's suborbital flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds, and while the capsule he was in suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm.
"As a result of that, a kind of mis-programming of the Ham missile, we were able to gain some very valuable information about what humans could or could not do under very adverse acceleration and deceleration issues," Grunzke said.
When first approached to help with the animal in space program, Grunzke was excited.
"If we stop to think about it, and you have to project yourself back to think about it -- (back then we didn't) even have the capability to send a grapefruit-sized (object) into space, and we were going to send animals into space," he said. "And they would be a precursor to man."
This was so exciting to Grunzke that he designed a program that demonstrated that animals could be trained to steer a missile.
"I did that because if we wanted to shoot a space flight to the moon, we would maybe have to steer the missile," he said. "The whole purpose was that we could steer a capsule into the atmosphere. The timeframe was such that we were just developing transistors. Everything that we did was on big relay racks" -- designed to program the schedules so he could switch and vary the schedule."
Grunzke considers himself generously blessed.
"I always say I have been generously blessed," Grunzke said. "There's not a whole lot that I did, but the Lord watched out for me.
"What we did was minimal things, but it opened the door."
Story Credit Here and video
Enter a hero, named Ham. The chimp would become the first hominid launched into outer space. And Ham wasn't just a passenger. He was taught to push a button once the light for re-entry came on. His mission set the stage for the one Alan Shepard would make May 5, 1961, aboard Freedom 7.
Marvin Grunzke of Montgomery, once an Air Force aeromedical specialist, holds a photo of Ham, the first chimp to be launched into space. Grunzke helped train Ham. (David Bundy Advertiser)
Monday is the 50th anniversary of when Ham the "astrochimp" launched into suborbital space inside a Mercury capsule.
And the chimpanzee's trainer, Marvin Grunzke -- a retired Air Force colonel and Faulkner University professor -- will discuss his work and experiences Monday at Dalraida United Methodist Church.
"Nobody had been in space, so nobody knew anything," Grunzke said.
But at the time, John F. Kennedy had became president, and announced that the country would make "space our project," said Grunzke, 87, "and that we're going to the moon.
"What was significant about it was, we had just sent a missile up that had difficulty carrying a basketball-sized space lobe," he said. "So our capability for space was pretty dramatic."
In October 1958, Grunzke and his wife, Eunice, lived at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Grunzke was working in an "unusual environments program," testing people and subjects in all types of environmental conditions.
One evening, Grunzke witnessed Sputnik -- although he wasn't sure whether it was Sputnik, or Sputnik 2, which carried Laika, a Soviet space dog.
The dog became the first animal to or- bit the Earth and the first orbital death.
"They had enough missile power to send that into space," Grunzke said. "And we didn't."
At that time -- the late 1950s -- there were only five people working in NASA, and they needed help. So the government approached the Air Force.
Grunzke was then an Air Force major and aeromedical specialist at Wright Patterson, and was requested by NASA to transfer to New Mexico to be a key trainer in the "animals in space" program.
After Grunzke worked for a couple of years to help develop training and data recording equipment and to train different animals, the chimp was selected and trained for space travel experimentation because the chimpanzees share common physical attributes with humans.
But there wasn't enough power in the capsule to carry anything too heavy, so the chimp could not weigh more than 30 pounds.
It was an exciting time for Grunzke, whose design developments -- including the chimp's chair, a restraint system, and even a pellet dispenser to hold treats -- took longer to complete than it did to train chimps, which only took a couple of weeks.
"They needed the chimps to have full movements, and only restrained them at the knee and ankles," Grunzke said. "We needed to assure the subject would respond, and reward them for good behavior.
"All of these things reflected the fact that we had to combine new technology and subjects new to us. We worked hard so we were able to stay ahead."
Grunzke said they developed two programs.
One, was a "continuous avoidance action" in which the chimp was required to continuously press the lever on a consistent basis.
"And they developed a nice schedule," he said. "They just sat there and kept pressing the lever. But another thing is ... we wanted to test to see if they had a good reflex response.
"So we developed another lever with a light over it, and it would come on in random intervals and the subject would have a quick time to respond. So they would be working the right-hand lever on a continuous basis and the left-hand lever would be on a single basis and (they) wouldn't respond to it except for when that light came on so we could test reaction times."
This helped researchers test their response time and their reflexes. Both were important because in both instances subjects were responding to avoid punishment. If needed, the punishment was saucer-type plates in the chimp's feet that would send a slight electric shock if needed.
They never failed.
"I don't have any regrets, because I know that there were things we had to do," Grunzke said of the punishment possibility. "There were things we had to do for the behavior to be maintained."
The researchers had to learn whether living things -- and eventually a human being -- could handle the rigors of space, said Grunzke, a professor of physiological psychology and behavioral statistics at Faulkner University for the past 15 years.
"We could see the subject was responding, and working accordingly," he said.
At one point during the short mission, though, Ham experienced 16 forces of gravity -- now, astronauts experience only three to four forces of gravity.
"When you have that kind of force, we learned we could literally do this," Grunzke said. "It showed them that man could do this as well.
"Because of the similarity between the chimp and the human, we could draw an extraction from that and show this could be a similar situation for humans."
In the end, Ham's suborbital flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds, and while the capsule he was in suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm.
"As a result of that, a kind of mis-programming of the Ham missile, we were able to gain some very valuable information about what humans could or could not do under very adverse acceleration and deceleration issues," Grunzke said.
When first approached to help with the animal in space program, Grunzke was excited.
"If we stop to think about it, and you have to project yourself back to think about it -- (back then we didn't) even have the capability to send a grapefruit-sized (object) into space, and we were going to send animals into space," he said. "And they would be a precursor to man."
This was so exciting to Grunzke that he designed a program that demonstrated that animals could be trained to steer a missile.
"I did that because if we wanted to shoot a space flight to the moon, we would maybe have to steer the missile," he said. "The whole purpose was that we could steer a capsule into the atmosphere. The timeframe was such that we were just developing transistors. Everything that we did was on big relay racks" -- designed to program the schedules so he could switch and vary the schedule."
Grunzke considers himself generously blessed.
"I always say I have been generously blessed," Grunzke said. "There's not a whole lot that I did, but the Lord watched out for me.
"What we did was minimal things, but it opened the door."
After Grunzke worked for a couple of years to help develop training and data recording equipment and to train different animals, the chimp was selected and trained for space travel experimentation because the chimpanzees share common physical attributes with humans.
But there wasn't enough power in the capsule to carry anything too heavy, so the chimp could not weigh more than 30 pounds.
It was an exciting time for Grunzke, whose design developments -- including the chimp's chair, a restraint system, and even a pellet dispenser to hold treats -- took longer to complete than it did to train chimps, which only took a couple of weeks.
"They needed the chimps to have full movements, and only restrained them at the knee and ankles," Grunzke said. "We needed to assure the subject would respond, and reward them for good behavior.
"All of these things reflected the fact that we had to combine new technology and subjects new to us. We worked hard so we were able to stay ahead."
Grunzke said they developed two programs.
One, was a "continuous avoidance action" in which the chimp was required to continuously press the lever on a consistent basis.
"And they developed a nice schedule," he said. "They just sat there and kept pressing the lever. But another thing is ... we wanted to test to see if they had a good reflex response.
"So we developed another lever with a light over it, and it would come on in random intervals and the subject would have a quick time to respond. So they would be working the right-hand lever on a continuous basis and the left-hand lever would be on a single basis and (they) wouldn't respond to it except for when that light came on so we could test reaction times."
This helped researchers test their response time and their reflexes. Both were important because in both instances subjects were responding to avoid punishment. If needed, the punishment was saucer-type plates in the chimp's feet that would send a slight electric shock if needed.
They never failed.
"I don't have any regrets, because I know that there were things we had to do," Grunzke said of the punishment possibility. "There were things we had to do for the behavior to be maintained."
The researchers had to learn whether living things -- and eventually a human being -- could handle the rigors of space, said Grunzke, a professor of physiological psychology and behavioral statistics at Faulkner University for the past 15 years.
"We could see the subject was responding, and working accordingly," he said.
At one point during the short mission, though, Ham experienced 16 forces of gravity -- now, astronauts experience only three to four forces of gravity.
"When you have that kind of force, we learned we could literally do this," Grunzke said. "It showed them that man could do this as well.
"Because of the similarity between the chimp and the human, we could draw an extraction from that and show this could be a similar situation for humans."
In the end, Ham's suborbital flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds, and while the capsule he was in suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm.
"As a result of that, a kind of mis-programming of the Ham missile, we were able to gain some very valuable information about what humans could or could not do under very adverse acceleration and deceleration issues," Grunzke said.
When first approached to help with the animal in space program, Grunzke was excited.
"If we stop to think about it, and you have to project yourself back to think about it -- (back then we didn't) even have the capability to send a grapefruit-sized (object) into space, and we were going to send animals into space," he said. "And they would be a precursor to man."
This was so exciting to Grunzke that he designed a program that demonstrated that animals could be trained to steer a missile.
"I did that because if we wanted to shoot a space flight to the moon, we would maybe have to steer the missile," he said. "The whole purpose was that we could steer a capsule into the atmosphere. The timeframe was such that we were just developing transistors. Everything that we did was on big relay racks" -- designed to program the schedules so he could switch and vary the schedule."
Grunzke considers himself generously blessed.
"I always say I have been generously blessed," Grunzke said. "There's not a whole lot that I did, but the Lord watched out for me.
"What we did was minimal things, but it opened the door."
Story Credit Here and video
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