Human Factors Research: Meshing Pilots with Planes

Steven A. Ruffin

The invention of flight exposed human limitations. Altitude effects endan­gered early aviators. As the capabilities of aircraft grew, so did the challenges for aeromedical and human factors researchers. Open cock­pits gave way to pressurized cabins. Wicker seats perched on the lead­ing edge of frail wood-and-fabric wings were replaced by robust metal seats and eventually sophisticated rocket-boosted ejection seats. The casual cloth work clothes and hats presaged increasingly complex suits.

S MERCURY ASTRONAUT ALAN B. SHEPARD, JR., lay flat on his back, sealed in a metal capsule perched high atop a Redstone rocket on the morning of May 5, 1961, many thoughts proba­bly crossed his mind: the pride he felt of becoming America’s first man in space, or perhaps, the possibility that the powerful rocket beneath him would blow him sky high. . . in a bad way, or maybe even a greater fear he would "screw the pooch” by doing something to embarrass him­self—or far worse—jeopardize the U. S. space program.

After lying there nearly 4 hours and suffering through several launch delays, however, Shepard was by his own admission not thinking about any of these things. Rather, he was consumed with an issue much more down to earth: his bladder was full, and he desperately needed to relieve himself. Because exiting the capsule was out of the question at this point, he literally had no place to go. The designers of his modified Goodrich

U. S. Navy Mark IV pressure suit had provided for nearly every contin­gency imaginable, but not this; after all, the flight was only scheduled to last a few minutes.

Finally, Shepard was forced to make his need known to the control­lers below. As he candidly described later, "You heard me, I’ve got to pee. I’ve been in here forever.”[286] Despite the unequivocal reply of "No!” to

his request, Shepard’s bladder gave him no alternative but to persist. Historic flight or not, he had to go—and now.

When the powers below finally accepted that they had no choice, they gave the suffering astronaut a reluctant thumbs up: so, "pee,” he did. . . all over his sensor-laden body and inside his gleaming silver spacesuit. And then, while the world watched—unaware of this behind- the-scenes drama—Shepard rode his spaceship into history. . . drenched in his own urine.

This inauspicious moment should have been something of an epiph­any for the human factors scientists who worked for the newly formed

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It graphi­cally pointed out the obvious: human requirements—even the most basic ones—are not optional; they are real, and accommodations must always be made to meet them. But NASA’s piloted space program had advanced so far technologically in such a short time that this was only one of many lessons that the Agency’s planners had learned the hard way. There would be many more in the years to come.

As described in the Tom Wolfe book and movie of the same name, The Right Stuff, the first astronauts were considered by many of their contemporary non-astronaut pilots—including the ace who first broke the sound barrier, U. S. Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager—as little more than "spam in a can.”[287] In fact, Yeager’s commander in charge of all the test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base had made it known that he didn’t particularly want his top pilots volunteering for the astronaut program; he considered it a "waste of talent.”[288] After all, these new astronauts— more like lab animals than pilots—had little real function in the early flights, other than to survive, and sealed as they were in their tiny metal capsules with no realistic means of escape, the cynical "spam in a can” metaphor was not entirely inappropriate.

But all pilots appreciated the dangers faced by this new breed of American hero: based on the space program’s much-publicized recent history of one spectacular experimental launch failure after another, it seemed like a morbidly fair bet to most observers that the brave astro­nauts, sitting helplessly astride 30 tons of unstable and highly explo­sive rocket fuel, had a realistic chance of becoming something akin to America’s most famous canned meat dish. It was indeed a dangerous job, even for the 7 overqualified test-pilots-turned-astronauts who had been so carefully chosen from more than 500 actively serving military test pilots.[289] Clearly, piloted space flight had to become considerably more human-friendly if it were to become the way of the future.

NASA had existed less than 3 years before Shepard’s flight. On July 19, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, and chief among the provisions was the establishment of NASA. Expanding on this act’s stated purpose of conducting research into the "problems of flight within and outside the earth’s atmosphere” was an objective to develop vehicles capable of carrying—among other things—"living organisms” through space.[290]

Because this official directive clearly implied the intention of send­ing humans into space, NASA was from its inception charged with formulating a piloted space program. Consequently, within 3 years after it was created, the budding space agency managed to successfully launch its first human, Alan Shepard, into space. The astronaut com­pleted NASA Mercury mission MR-3 to become America’s first man in space. Encapsulated in his Freedom 7 spacecraft, he lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL, and flew to an altitude of just over 116 miles before splashing down into the Atlantic Ocean 302 miles downrange.[291] It was only a 15-minute suborbital flight and, as related above, not without problems, but it accomplished its objective: America officially had a piloted space program.

This was no small accomplishment. Numerous major technological barriers had to be surmounted during this short time before even this most basic of piloted space flights was possible. Among these obstacles, none was more challenging than the problems associated with main­taining and supporting human life in the ultrahostile environment of space. Thus, from the beginning of the Nation’s space program and con­tinuing to the present, human factors research has been vital to NASA’s comprehensive research program.