PRELUDE TO FLIGHT

Three days prior to the launch of MR-2, newspaper reports across the United States were abuzz with a mounting air of excitement and expectation, as the flight of the chimpanzee was rightly being viewed as a prelude to the first flight of a human into space. An Associated Press report on Friday, 28 January 1961, described the build-up to the mission at Cape Canaveral, stressing that good visibility at the launch site and crucial points down the Atlantic test range was an essential requirement for the liftoff to proceed:

In another 24 hours, if there are no delays, scientists will take a final look at six chimpanzees in their quarters here and pick one for the honor of being the nation’s first animal astronaut to check out a Mercury spacecraft like those human astronauts will ride in later launchings. Then, six hours before launch time, the chimp will be packed into its own special space couch in a pressure chamber inside the nine – foot-high Mercury capsule.

If the shot goes, this chimp – a mild-looking member of a specially trained team of four females and two males – will discover for science in a space of 16 minutes whether an animal, much like man in many ways, can tolerate the fantastic stresses of rocket flight under conditions of weightlessness in airless space.

The launching vehicle will be a special Redstone missile which will hurl the chimp 115 miles up and 290 miles downrange at a speed hitting a peak of 4,000 miles an hour.

If chimp and spacecraft make the flight okay, a human astronaut will try it in the next three months. Then, if a host of other trials go well, another chimp will be fired into orbit, and another astronaut will follow his trail, late this year or early next [7].

At 8:00 p. m. (EST) on Monday night, James Henry and John Mosely were on hand to select the prime and backup candidates. According to Ed Dittmer, “We didn’t know which chimp would be going until the day before launch. There were six of them that were selected and they were all good, but Ham easily stood out as the best of the bunch.” [8] Henry and Mosely agreed with Dittmer’s judgment, selecting Ham because of his solid work under test conditions, as well as his general good nature, physical well-being, and alertness at the time. He was also declared to be the best prepared of the six finalists, having amassed 219 hours of training over a 15-month period, including being subjected to simulated Redstone launch profiles on the centrifuge at the Air Force Aerospace Medical Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. The preferred backup chimpanzee, one of the four females, was Subject 46, known to her handlers as Minnie. She would be prepared to replace Ham at short notice should he develop any late abnormalities.