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The flight had been a great success, all things considered. But one thing bothered the NASA Life Sciences people. The animal's blood pressure had been badly elevated. It had run from 160 to 200 throughout—even when his pulse rate was normal and he was watching his lights and pulling his levers with great efficiency. Was this some sort of morbid and unforeseen effect of prolonged weightlessness? Were astronauts in earth orbit going to be candidates for apoplexy? The Holloman veterinarians hastened to reassure them that Number 85—er, Enos—had registered high-blood-pressure readings for two years now. It seemed to be the nature of the beast. The NASA folk nodded… although 200, systolic, was awfully goddamned high…
Privately, the situation had the Holloman scientists thinking, and not about space flight, either. The readings they had gotten from Number 85 in the past with the cuff may or may not have been reliable. But there was no mistaking the readings of the catheters during the flight and just before it. Once they were inserted, Number 85 wasn't even aware of them. They were giving true readings. His blood pressure had not gone up because of the stresses of the flight. He took the flight with the utmost aplomb; his heart and respiratory rates and body temperatures were actually below the readings obtained during the centrifuge runs. In fact, his blood pressure had not gone up at all. It had been up there all along. A theory with implications for man-on-earth, not man-in-space, was begi
There was even a press conference at which the chimpanzee appeared. "Enos" he was, of course. At the press conference Bob Gilruth a
At the outset neither Gle
Not even when reporters began arriving in New Concord, Ohio, his old hometown, and pushing his parents' doorbell and roaming and foaming over the town like gangs of strays, looking for anything, scraps, morsels of information about John Gle
Nevertheless, the training regimen created a curtain around John, and he didn't really have as clear an idea of the storm of publicity… and the passion of it all… as his wife did. At their house in Arlington, Virginia, A
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"Inside this trim, modest suburban home is A