Dry Space Run

Just before stepping out of an airtight mock-up nose cone at Ohio's Wright Air Development Center last week, Civilian Engineer Courtney Metzger took a swig of water. "It tastes much better than the ordinary kind in the supply tank," he reported to Space Physician John Paul Stapp. Agreed Stapp: "It's no worse than some of the stuff you get at cocktail parties." As part of Project Hermes, a program that aims to give the first space travelers all the comforts of hygiene, the water had been distilled from Metzger's urine.

In the longest test to date of life-sustaining equipment for spacemen, Stapp's Aeromedical Laboratory sealed Metzger away for seven days and nights. Using only as much power as solar batteries would provide, the experiment tested water-disposal and odor-removal systerr other devices ranging from a thermoelectric refrigerator to a tiny oven built to heat toothpaste-type tubes of mashed potatoes, vegetables and turkey.

Metzger ate twice a day (he lost 4 Ibs.), read the Bible, watched TV through a window in the 7-ft. diameter cone, slept only six hours a night but made up for it by lying on his back some twelve hours a day, doing nothing at all. Sheets of potassium superoxide absorbed his breath, removed the potentially poisonous carbon dioxide and released the fresh oxygen that he lived on all week. He came through so well that the space doctors are now at last ready to try the test in the weightless condition of actual space, first with animals, then with men.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.