Medical Aspects of Space Flight

NASA Educational Publication EP-17, a short illustrated leaflet rather than a technical reference volume, written by Capt. Frank B. Voris, USN, Chief of Human Research in the Biotechnology and Human Research Division of NASA’s Office of Advanced Research and Technology. Surveys the medical challenges of Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo in plain language: supplying respiratory requirements (comparing the U.S. 5-psi pure-oxygen system to the Soviet 14.7-psi mixed-gas approach), the full pressure suit as both safety device and firefighting tool, acceleration forces and custom-molded couches, weightlessness, radiation hazards, nutrition, waste disposal, micrometeorite strikes, and psychological problems, closing with a section on the biotechnology spinoffs of the space program (cardiac monitoring, mining and diving equipment, metallurgy). Illustrated with a photograph of “Amy,” a mouse flown and recovered with a telemetering “mouse-mitter,” a flight-simulator tracking test at Ames Research Center, and John Glenn training on the human centrifuge at the Naval Air Development Center, Johnsville, Pennsylvania.