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This Month in AFMS History: Sealed Cabin Simulator

  • Published
  • AFMS History Office
FALLS CHURCH, Va. --  

In March 1956, Airman D.F. Smith spent 24 hours sealed inside the Space Cabin Simulator at the United States Air Force School of Aviation Medicine (USAFSAM), Randolph Air Force Base, Tex.  The reason? The dream of manned space flight.

The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union captured the imagination of a worldwide audience. But testing to determine if humans could survive in space began decades earlier.

Although NASA later became the premier American space program, as early as 1918, the U.S. Army began researching and testing the effects of potential space flight on the human body. This included how decompression and high altitude pressures that affected atmosphere, air supply, and breathing might influence the physiology of future astronauts.  In the 1930s, high-altitude civilian aviators also tested equipment examining pressure suits that resembled deep sea divers.  However, it was research efforts in the 1950s that explored pilots breathing pure oxygen, using simulated pressurized cabins, and later sealed cabins that yielded a way forward.[1]

In 1952, USAFSAM designed blueprints for a sealed container that would be utilized in space medicine research.  This investigative study would be supported by Dr. Hubertus Strughold, MD, PHD, a well-known physiologist and medical researcher from Germany.  As the director of the Department of Space Medicine and USAFSAM in 1954, Dr. Strughold would introduce the Space Cabin Simulator.  The cabin consisted of 100 cubic feet of living space, a cooling system, an oxygen supply and carbon dioxide absorption system, and a recyclable urine distillation system that provided potable water sufficient enough for consumption. 

On March 28, 1956, the Space Cabin Simulator gained national attention when Airman D.F. Smith volunteered to spend 24 hours undergoing a number of psychological tests while sealed inside the cabin. A few months later on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I the world’s first artificial satellite.  Shortly afterwards on January 31, 1958, the United States Defense Department responded by launching the U.S.’s first satellite, Explore I, that eventually led to the birth of the NASA.  These tests and many more followed as the USAF and NASA worked together to put a man into space.[2]

 

 

 

[1] Article (U), Loyd S. Swenson Jr., James M. Grimwood, Charles C. Alexander, NASA, This New Ocean:  A History of Project Mercury, “Environmental Control,” 1989.

[2] Book (U), Eugene M. Emme, NASA Historian, Aeronautics and Astronautics,” 16 December 60