I read the autobiography Charlie Duke Moonwalker about an Apollo 16 astronaut before I attended Test Pilot School. (I am rereading now as I prepare to republish it digitally, and I will give you all a sneak peek at the finished version very soon).
Charlie’s account of the Test Pilot School experience is spot on–everything, including the response of his wife, brought back a flood of memories and even some tears.
Here is an excerpt that really made me laugh:
Because they felt that the problem was due to a loss of potassium, the docs had decided to add large doses of potassium to our food. In this way they hoped to maintain a proper level in our bodies. But as a safety measure, they had also decided to add some new medication to our in-flight medical kit. If serious trouble arose, we would have syringes of this special medication, which we could inject directly into our hearts.
One of the doctors got up to explain the procedure. “Here is one of the syringes that we want you to use.” That syringe got our attention! It was about three inches long and about the size of a 12-gauge shotgun shell. The needle was not exposed.
“Take the syringe and place it right below your sternum, or breast bone.” He showed us how to count down a certain number of ribs to get to the right place. “Press hard and a needle from inside the canister will fire into the heart and inject the medicine.” We didn’t much like this idea and expressed our feelings to the doctors.
“Well, there’s really nothing to it,” they answered. “We’ll give you a demonstration.” They had a Styrofoam ball about the size of a large orange. One of them took the ball in one hand and the syringe in the other and pressed the syringe against the Styrofoam ball.
And as he pressed hard, bam-the thing went off! And as the needle fired the medicine into the ball, it blew the whole back end of the ball off. It was a shower of Styrofoam.
There was stunned silence in the room. I looked around and all six of us, the prime and backup crew, were as white as sheets!
You’ll have to wait for publication to read the rest of the story.
Publisher’s note: (That’s me–it just sounds more official when I write it that way.) Some people may not want all the techno-mumbo-jumbo that’s normally in this blog, and you may only want to subscribe to these more personal updates. So I set up a special subscription for that option here: by Email or RSS.