Spinning for Space

The cylindrical room at the Pensacola Naval Air Station was spinning around at ten revolutions per minute all last week. Inside it, along with a medical officer, were four young volunteer enlisted men who seemed to have nothing more serious to do than loll around in shorts and T shirts, watch TV, phone girl friends downtown, play catch with a tennis ball or toss darts.

But despite the casual air, there was nothing frivolous about the activity in that spinning silo. The Coriolis Acceleration Platform, as the Navy calls it, is being used as a reach into the future. In an experiment designed by Captain Ashton Graybiel, research director at the Navy's School of Aviation Medicine, Navy doctors are trying to find out what will happen to men when they venture into space on long interplanetary journeys. Cardiologist Graybiel suspects that the gravity-free condition in space may be bad for the heart and the rest of the circulatory system. But is it possible to rotate a spaceship and invest it satisfactorily with something like an artificial gravity? And if so, which rotation speeds will make the men dizzy, and which will be safe?

Twitch of Vertigo. The volunteers and their medic, Lieut. Frederick R. Deane, entered the spin room on Feb. 8, when it started to turn at a lethargic 2 r.p.m. The pace was stepped up by easy stages to 10 r.p.m. Dr. Deane has spent most of his nights "ashore," while another medic took over; but the four volunteers, aged 17 to 19, have had no break in their routine. Though the room is painted the restful apple green of hospital corridors, it has no windows. Despite its homey appurtenances which include pictures of girl friends, a sink, stove, refrigerator, TV and toilet, and its efficient air conditioning, it offers no privacy. In the middle of the floor stands the maypole-like axis around which the chamber rotates.

There are no beds--only mattresses on the deck. The volunteers sleep like flower petals, with their heads as close to the room's center as they can get.

The occupants' day begins with reveille at 6:45. Half an hour later the revolving room slows down and grinds to a stop. A door is opened and used bedding is taken out while breakfast is brought in. Similar stops are made at noon and dinnertime for meals to be put aboard. As the room slows down, the occupants must lie down. Otherwise they would suffer vertigo. One little twitch of the head at this stage would destroy their painstakingly built-up adaptation to rotation.

Darts to the Left. Within a few minutes, the chamber is revved up again to 10 r.p.m., and the day's tests begin. Playing catch with a tennis ball has become a difficult task requiring great skill and adaptation to the rotation speed. Routine jobs on a spaceship would be no easier. Since the room is moving counterclockwise, the pitcher must aim the ball to the left of the catcher. The dart board presents the same problem. Early in the run, the men readily learned to counteract the spin at low speeds. Now they are being tested again at the higher r.p.m. and are finding the game a good deal tougher.

After lunch, the men go through more sophisticated physiological tests. A lighted box gauges the intensity of the "oculogyral illusion" (in which spinning subjects see sidewise motion in a stationary object); electrodes taped above, beside and below each eye, measure the degree to which the men have developed nystagmus (rhythmic oscillation of the eyeballs).

The room is rotating while meals are eaten, and breakfast through dinner the spaceman volunteers are offered generous portions of a normal earthman's diet. But as the r.p.m. picked up, the men's appetites flagged; increasingly they concentrated on servings of cake and chocolate milk. It takes a surprising amount of energy merely to walk in the spinning room, and Dr. Deane notes that "they're all getting quite tired." Even the members of the quartet who normally stay up late are hitting the sack earlier and earlier--while sticking to the Navy custom of sleeping in their skivvies.

Before this experiment, no volunteers had been spun for more than 14 days. So far, says Dr. Deane, all he can be sure of are "a few changes in the chemistry of the blood and urine, and more indications of nystagmus"--no motion sickness.

This week the spin room will be slowed down, and then stopped after 28 dizzying days. The men will still have to spend four days on board for intensive testing before they can lurch off for liberty in Pensacola.

Says Captain Graybiel: "They've adapted very well. It looks as though, if you adapt well at 5 r.p.m., you can go on up. There may be no limit to the r.p.m."

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