Blast Off / Animals In Space - Ham Traditional Cache
Space_Cadets: Due to the demolition of the building the cache is no longer accessible. It is time to retire this cache. Upon completion of the demolition, if the host and cache are still in place, I will remove the container.
Blast Off / Animals In Space - Ham
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Blast Off / Animals In Space is a series of caches about the true pioneers of space flight before Man --- the animals.
Ham (July 1956 – January 19, 1983), also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, was the first chimpanzee launched into outer space in the American space program. Ham's name is an acronym for the lab that prepared him for his historic mission — the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, located at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
EARLY LIFE
Ham was born July 1956 in Cameroon, captured by animal trappers and sent to Rare Bird Farm in Miami, Florida. He was purchased by the United States Air Force and brought to Holloman Air Force Base in 1959.
There were originally 40 chimpanzee flight candidates at Holloman. After evaluation the number of candidates was reduced to 18, then to 6, including Ham. Officially, Ham 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.
TRAINING AND MISSION
Beginning in July 1959, the three-year-old chimpanzee was trained under the direction of neuroscientist Joseph V. Brady at Holloman Air Force Base Aero Medical Field Laboratory to do simple, timed tasks in response to electric lights and sounds. In his pre-flight training, Ham was taught to push a lever within five seconds of seeing a flashing blue light; failure to do so resulted in an application of positive punishment in the form of a mild electric shock to the soles of his feet, while a correct response earned him a banana pellet.
What differentiates Ham's mission from all the other primate flights to this point is that he was not merely a passenger, and the results from his test flight led directly to the mission Alan Shepard made on May 5, 1961 aboard Freedom 7.
On January 31, 1961, Ham was secured in a Project Mercury mission labeled MR-2 and launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a suborbital flight. Ham had his vital signs and tasks monitored using computers on Earth. The capsule suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, but Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm. Ham's lever-pushing performance in space was only a fraction of a second slower than on Earth, demonstrating that tasks could be performed in space. Ham's capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean and was recovered by a rescue ship later that day. He only suffered a bruised nose. His flight was 16 minutes and 39 seconds long.
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Puvzcf pyvzo gurfr
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