Ham the Chimp

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ham fitted into a special biopack couch prior to flight.
Ham fitted into a special biopack couch prior to flight.
The famous "hand shake" welcome. After his flight on the Mercury Redstone rocket, chimpanzee Ham is greeted by the commander of the recovery ship, USS Donner (LSD-20).
The famous "hand shake" welcome. After his flight on the Mercury Redstone rocket, chimpanzee Ham is greeted by the commander of the recovery ship, USS Donner (LSD-20).


Ham (July 1957 – January 19, 1983), also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, was the first hominid launched into outer space. Ham's name is an acronym for the lab that prepared him for his historic mission — the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, located at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Ham was born in July 1957 [1] [2]:245 in present-day Cameroon and captured by animal trappers and sent to Rare Bird Farm in Miami, Florida. [2]:245 He was purchased by the United States Air Force and brought to Holloman Air Force Base in 1959. [1]

There were originally 40 chimpanzee flight candidates at Holloman. After evaluation the number of candidates was reduced to 18, then to 6 including Ham. [2]:245-246

[edit] The Mission

Beginning in July 1959, the four-year-old chimpanzee was trained at the Holloman Air Force Base Aero Medical Field Laboratory to do simple, timed tasks in response to electric lights and sounds. [3] In his pre-flight training, Ham was taught to push a lever within five seconds of seeing a flashing blue light; failure to do so would result in an application of positive punishment in the form of a mild electric shock to the soles of his feet, while a correct response earned him a banana pellet. [4]:243 After all of the training, it was time to find out whether he could function under the stress and pressure that comes with space travel. What differentiates Ham's mission from all the other primate flights to this point is that he was not merely a passenger, and the results from his test flight led directly to the mission Alan Shepard would make on May 5, 1961 aboard the Freedom 7.

On January 31, 1961, Ham was secured in a Project Mercury capsule labeled MR-2 and launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, into outer space. [4]:314-315 Ham had his vital signs and tasks monitored using computers back on Earth.[5] The capsule suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, but Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm. [4]:315 Ham's lever-pushing performance in space was only a fraction of a second slower than on Earth, demonstrating that tasks could be performed in space.[4]:316 Ham's capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean and was recovered by a rescue ship later that day. [4]:316 He only suffered a bruised nose.[5] His flight was 16 minutes and 39 seconds long. [6]

Ten months later, another chimp, named Enos, successfully orbited the earth. [4]:404 This was several months after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight and Shepard and Grissom's suborbital flights, but before US astronaut John Glenn’s orbital flight aboard Mercury's Friendship 7.

[edit] Later Life

After the flight, Ham lived for 17 years in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., then at the North Carolina Zoo before dying at the age of 26 on January 19, 1983. [2]:255-257 Ham appeared repeatedly on television, as well as on film with Evel Knievel. [2]:255

Ham's backup, Minnie, was the only female chimp trained for the Mercury program. After her role in the Mercury program ended, Minnie became part of an Air Force chimpanzee breeding program, producing nine offspring and helping to raise the offspring of several other members of the chimpanzee colony. [2]:258-259 She was the last surviving astro-chimp. She died at age 41 on March 14, 1998. [2]:259

[edit] Ham in Popular Culture

  • Ham was mentioned at the end of the movie Race to Space, a fictionalized story of the first chimp in space.
  • Ham is mentioned in Grant Morrison's The Filth, where he is derided as "Handsome Ham, the John Glenn of the apes" by the Soviet chimp-assassin Dmitri-9. Later, he appears in a hallucination, congratulating Dmitri-9 for his accomplishments just before the assassin is hit by a train.
  • Ham is discussed in the first series of The Ricky Gervais Show Podcast.
  • He is referenced as the grandfather of protagonist Ham III in the upcoming movie Space Chimps and being the sole reason he is picked for the mission in the first place.
  • In 2008, Bark Hide & Horn, a folk-rock band from Portland, Oregon, released a song titled, "Ham the Astrochimp," detailing the journey of Ham from his perspective.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Gray, Tara (1998). A Brief History of Animals in Space. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Retrieved on 2008-05-12.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Burgess, Colin; Chris Dubbs [2007-01-24]. Animals in Space: From Research Rockets to the Space Shuttle, Springer-Praxis Books in Space Exploration. Springer. ISBN 9780387360539. OCLC 77256557. 
  3. ^ House, George (April-June 1991). "Project Mercury's First Passengers". Spacelog 8 (2): 4-5. Alamogordo, New Mexico: International Space Hall of Fame Foundation. ISSN 10728171. OCLC 18058232. 
  4. ^ a b c d e f Swenson Jr., Loyd S.; James M. Grimwood, Charles C. Alexander [1966]. This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, NASA History Series. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. OCLC 00569889. Retrieved on 2008-05-11. 
  5. ^ a b Margaret G. Zackowitz (October 2007). The Primate Directive. National Geographic Magazine. Retrieved on 2008-04-30.
  6. ^ NASA Project Mercury Mission MR-2. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Retrieved on 2008-05-11.