Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on Sept 30, 2005 0:31:40 GMT -6
Adler visitors take centrifuge for a spin
News
Adler visitors take centrifuge for a spin
September 29, 2005
A press preview Wednesday included lunch for reporters -- served after a tour of the exhibit, which stars Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 capsule. In all likelihood, Adler folks figured it would be cleaner to spin first, feed later.
The centrifuge features two capsules that rotate like a merry-go-round at a speed fast enough to simulate 2 G forces, or about equal to twice the rider's weight. Each pod seats two dizzy riders.
The space is cramped. The rider's knees are just inches away from a video screen that shows some of what Grissom might have seen during his 15-minute flight in 1961.
"Oh, boy!'' Grissom can be heard shouting as the centrifuge spins, the rider becomes disoriented, and Earth fades away. During Grissom's journey four decades ago, he endured more than 11 Gs as his rocket hit 25,000 mph.
For the Adler "astro-nots,'' the only requirements are to buckle up, hold tight, avoid pushing the red "chicken switch,'' which will stop the ride -- and keep your breakfast down.
In NASA centrifuge training, now discontinued, astronauts were given tasks to do while spinning to prepare them in case their craft went out of control. Few astronauts look back fondly on the centrifuge. In various autobiographies, many use the word "diabolical.''
Michael Collins, the command module pilot on Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission, writes that at 8 Gs, he felt sharp pains in his chest. At 10 Gs, "breathing is nearly impossible.'' As the centrifuge spun even faster, his vision began to fade as darkness closed in on the edges of his eyes.
Gordon Cooper once hit 18 Gs, which he said "felt as if a Mack truck had been parked on my chest.'' Some astronauts, post-spin, found red speckles on their skin -- tiny hemorrhages called petechiae. Collins recounted how the centrifuge could create "lingering hangovers'' that could last for days.
The Adler centrifuge -- which offers an experience similar to a Tilt-A-Whirl -- runs for only about a minute. A long minute.
Grissom once said that as miserable as the centrifuge was, the hours of being shook up gave him more confidence in his "ability to pilot a spacecraft than any other test."
The exhibit, Lost Spacecraft, runs Sunday through Jan. 8. There is no extra charge for riding the centrifuge.
NASA technicians dubbed it "the County Fair Killer.'' Astronaut Deke Slayton described it as a "carnival ride gone wild.'' Alan B. Shepard Jr., the first American in space, called it an "oversized cream separator.''
"Either it whips you,'' Shepard once observed. "Or you whip it.''
It is the centrifuge -- a massive machine that spins its occupants to simulate the gravitational forces felt by astronauts leaving and re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
Full story here: www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-adler29.html
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Can't wait to strap in myself!...