Word: airing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Torture & Triumph. The seven Astronauts of Project Mercury were winnowed out by the most searching tests man could devise and machine could execute. Last winter, just after new Space Administrator T. Keith Glennan ordered the space shoot, the Air Force, Navy and Marines selected the nation's no likeliest military test pilots (requirement: at least 1,500 flight hours). Clattering IBM punch-card selectors pared the list to 69 men of optimum size, health, intelligence. Offered a chance to volunteer...
...months ago, 32 finalists began to file into Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, from there went on to the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton for more tests. For two weeks they were jolted, spun, vibrated, crushed, chilled and roasted in physical and psychological tests simulating the stresses of space flight. Each man was set to hiking on a treadmill that was elevated one degree per minute, and to pedaling increasing amounts of weight on a bikelike device. Each was whirled for 3½ minutes in a centrifuge speeding at various angles that simulated pressures...
Meanwhile, the space vehicle, the Air Force's Atlas ICBM, will get a series of tests, with animals riding the capsules in some flights. After Astronauts and vehicle have checked out so that chances of successful probe and return are 96% to 98% -the same as the maiden flight of any experimental aircraft-the day of flight will be set. On that day the first man will be designated...
...Astronauts' top-ranking, most experienced officer (more than 5,000 flight hours, 1,500 in jets), has seen the most combat (59 World War II fighter-bomber missions in the Pacific, 100 missions, three MIGs downed in Korea), carries the weightiest decorations (five Distinguished Flying Crosses, 19 Air Medals), is the most famed of the lot (he won headlines in 1957 as the first man to fly supersonically from Los Angeles to New York-piloting a Chance Vought F8U in 3 hr., 23 min.-later won $25,000 on TV's Name That Tune), probably has the most...
...Scott Carpenter went back into the Navy in 1949 to complete flight training interrupted at World War II's end, logged part of his 2,800 flight hours (300 in jets) in Korean combat (aerial mining, antisub patrols), then went through Navy Test Pilot School, General Line School, Air Intelligence School, became air intelligence officer of the carrier Hornet. He recalls: "When I was notified that I was being considered [for Mercury], I was at sea, and so my wife called Washington and volunteered...