FW: [FPSPACE] Alan Shepard & "Pigs In Space"

[Goodman, John L]

Pigs were used in some tests of the Mercury crushable aluminum honey-comb energy absorption system for landing.  See pages 143 and 144 of This New Ocean, A History of Project Mercury (NASA SP-4201).  These were ground tests, not actual flights involving launches.  

Perhaps the author had things confused.

John Goodman  

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From: fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org
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Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 12:23 PM
To: Jonathan McDowell; fpspace at friends-partners.org;
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Subject: [FPSPACE] New Book About Alan Shepard


I have just finished the book "Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard: America's First Spaceman" by Neal Thompson, a journalist from North Carolina.  To me the book was a combination of "Moonshot" and "Deke", but something caught my eye on Page 235 when he wrote about the launch of HAM in January 1961. "A few weeks earlier, in late January, NASA had launched a chimpanzee named Ham on a flight using the same type of redstone rocket that Shepard was scheduled to fly.  For two years NASA had been using chimps and pigs in test launches."

I knew about the chimps, but never heard of any pigs being launched?


John Graham