Dumb Flight Surgeon Tricks
A website dedicated to some opinions from flight surgeons during the early days of the manned space program. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Doctors worried that humans might not be able to drink fluids in weightlessness. Schirra countered that in 1948 he had seen Commander Armistead Smith drink a martini while standing on his head at the Quonset Point Officers Club, proving that humans could successfully take fluids at minus-one G, a more demanding task than drinking at zero-G
- Apollo 7 was going to be the first spaceflight after the disastrous Apollo 1 fire that had killed Grissom, White, and Chaffee. In order to decrease the risk of fire, mission planners wanted the Apollo 7 crew to shave all the hair from their bodies. Mission commander Wally Schirra responded "I argued that the hair would grow back in the course of the [11-day] mission, and the new hair would be just as flammable as what had been shaved off. I also intimated that if the danger was such that hair was a hazard, then maybe I'd rather not fly the machine at all. The powers that be relented.
- Dr. Harry Armstrong (? Hubertus Strughold) opined that, before sending humans to Mars, they should probably have their appendix and gallbladder removed.
