For me, the most interesting chapter throughout this book would be chapter 8. This chapter specifically talks about Ham and Enos, the two chimpanzees that took flight into space. People did not know whether or not to treat them as astronauts or chimpanzees, and to this day, people are still confused by which to specify them as. There were many concerns when it came to deciding on whether or not it would be safe to launch. A lot of the worries had to do with weightlessness and whether or not the astronaut would have the same type of strength being weightless as he did before he left Earth. This is where Ham comes in. He went through a lot of training that had to do with pulling different levers in case something went wrong on the shuttle.
I found this chapter to be extremely interesting because we put our faith into a chimpanzee to get a job done. He weighs less than the average human being, so thinking of putting him through training to succeed with this type of mission astonishes me beyond words. I'm not sure how I feel about them thinking of a chimpanzee's life as being any less worthy than that of a human being, but I understand why they thought this was appropriate to do before launching a man. On page 154 of "Packing For Mars" it stated, "To be preceded by a chimpanzee was just a blow to their ego." People felt that if a chimp was sent to space before man that man would be looked down upon and the extraordinary event wouldn't have been as amazing once it was man's turn. I disagree with this statement. I think that by using chimpanzees for such a highly developed task proves that we are able to use different resources and have the smarts to really work with different parts of nature as a whole.
I liked this idea also. The fact that they relied on two chimpanzees to complete a job is amazing. They were able to do something that is beyond the ordinary and make it happen. They trained them for the tasks they were needed for and then sent them into space to complete them and that's something that the world has never considered doing until they did this and succeed in it. Having man be able to do this is also good because they can do more than a chimpanzee but they are not able to get into the smaller compartments of things such as the satellites that need fixing and therefore it’s good to have the chimpanzees there to do some of those things.
ReplyDeleteThis has me thinking back to the first chapter of picking the astronauts. The astronauts went through intense training for a chance to go into space. They were observed and tested for a week straight having all of their actions analyzed. It takes a lot of tough work to become an astronaut. After all this hard work some of the candidates were sent home. I think it’s a little harsh to say, but they were disqualified for a job that a chimpanzee was able to do. While I understand that the chimpanzees served an important part in the mission they were in, it is funny to compare it to the candidates that were not fortunate enough to fly.
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