Ad Astra

"Flash! Radio contact with the two United States Army officers on the Space Platform . . . has definitely been established . . . Come in, Space! . . . Tell the listeners here on earth, tell us, in your position far out there in free space . . . what's it like to be actually a, part of the solar system, with your own private orbit? . . . Do you feel the pull of gravity?" "No, sir, I don't . . . Now that you mention it, I don't feel the pull of dames, either . . . You suppose gravity has anything to do with sex? . . . I know I don't weigh anything, and when you don't weigh anything, you don't seem to want anything." --"The Morning of the Day They Did It"

The psychological difficulties that beset the characters in E. B. White's New Yorker fantasy seemed less remote than ever last week. In Space Medicine (University of Illinois; $3), a half-dozen assorted Army and Air Force scientists published their theories on what they consider the principal unsolved problem of manned rocket flight: the limits of human endurance.

Space Doctors. Students of such unearthly fields as comparative planetary biology and bioclimatology, the scientists explain that, given the money and materials they need, they could toss a rocket full of passengers to Venus or to Mars. But the odds are that vegetation (if any) on those planets would provide no sustenance, and that the temperatures and pressures would be unbearable for earthlings. So the astrophysicists, and the ordnance experts, and the doctors of space medicine* deal with the somewhat more probable--the multi-stage rockets which they would like to use as artificial, man-carrying satellites.

Can the human frame stand the painful acceleration (at least three times the pull of gravity for the first 9 1/2 minutes) needed to propel a rocket into a permanent orbit around the earth? Perhaps, say the scientists--if the cabin is properly air-conditioned, if the passengers' heads are clamped into position to prevent a neck-snapping jolt during takeoff, if some kind of magnetic suits are provided to hold them to the floor when the familiar pull of gravity fades away. Could the weightless pilot, whipping through space at seven miles a second, depend on his sense of vision alone to keep his balance? Maybe. One of the doctors suggests a way to find out: 1) put a congenital deaf-mute (who has never had a normal sense of balance) in a diving suit; 2) submerge him until the buoyancy of water exactly balances gravity; 3) then give him "tasks of visual orientation" to perform.

Space Travelers. Even if the space travelers survive their first hazards, they will have plenty of other things to worry about. Fog would envelop the cabin after the slightest perspiration on the part of the passengers. Their hair would stand on end, their clothes would balloon away from their bodies, and anything not nailed down would float aimlessly about the ship's interior. The space ship and its passengers would be bombarded by dangerous solar X rays and cosmic rays, would run the risk of colliding with meteorites plunging across the interplanetary course.

In his fantasy, Author White came to the conclusion that to build a space station might well be a disastrous experiment. "In any matter involving love, or high explosives," said he, "one can never foresee all the factors." "Caution," agrees one of the Air Force's space doctors, "is generally recommended."

*A subject the Air Force takes so seriously that it has established a Department of Space Medicine in its School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Air Force base.

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