{"id":16337,"date":"2013-01-28T16:13:53","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T16:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=16337"},"modified":"2017-08-07T23:02:21","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T22:02:21","slug":"monkeying-about-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2013\/01\/28\/monkeying-about-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Monkeying About In Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the news today that Iran has sent a monkey into space<\/a>, it seems appropriate to post these pictures of the less than luxury accommodation occupied by chimpanzee Ham<\/a> in an earlier era of space exploration.<\/p>\n

\"Mercury-Redstone<\/a>
Mercury-Redstone 2 Capsule (Photo: Tim Jones. Taken at California Science Center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I checked out the Mercury-Redstone 2 capsule on display at the California Science Center while waiting to view the Space Shuttle<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

\"Mercury-Redstone<\/a>
Mercury-Redstone 2 Capsule (Photo: Tim Jones. Taken at California Science Center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four year old Ham, who was an ape rather than a monkey, launched into space on 31st January 1961.  He proved that beings similar to humans could survive and perform functions in space: to which end Ham was given a series of levers to pull on command (red, white, and black above).<\/p>\n

\"Ham\"<\/a>
Ham on his way (Photo:NASA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s quite a mess in there:<\/p>\n

\"Mercury-Redstone<\/a>
Mercury-Redstone 2 Capsule (Photo: Tim Jones. Taken at California Science Center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amazingly, the capsule Alan Shepard piloted to orbit three months later didn’t look that much different.<\/p>\n

Ham beats the Iranian monkey on altitude, reaching 157 miles against the Iranian’s 75 miles – not that either would be aware of how high they were.  The BBC report suggests the Iranian’s were testing the acceleration and deceleration of the rocket – although there’s the inevitiable ambiguity over why they’d want to do that, and the implications for weapons testing [monkey survives = warhead survives ?].<\/p>\n

In related news<\/a>, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced this month they’d be stopping the use of chimpanzees for medical research; although I’m not sure where that leaves potential future space chimps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Also of interest:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guardian article on Ham http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/animal-magic\/2013\/dec\/16\/ham-chimpanzee-hero-or-victim?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the news today that Iran has sent a monkey into space, it seems appropriate to post these pictures of the less than luxury accommodation occupied by chimpanzee Ham in an earlier era of space exploration. I checked out the Mercury-Redstone 2 capsule on display at the California Science Center while waiting to view the … Continue reading Monkeying About In Space<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Monkeying About In Space (Zoonomian) http:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-4fv","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,336],"tags":[1330,1329,1331,1332,1333,983,1411],"class_list":["post-16337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-space","tag-chimpanzee","tag-ham","tag-iran","tag-monkey","tag-orbit","tag-rocket","tag-space"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-4fv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16337"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18440,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16337\/revisions\/18440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}