I have question why astronauts candidates was tested in bizarre ways like this?

[Pawelk198604]

Here you gave clip from The Right Stuff] In this video showing, on of exterminates that mercury astronaut, in this case Alan Sheppard, must go through.

I wonder does American aside Von Braun, taken Joseph Mengele too ?

[Scotius]

In the early days of manned space program, scientists, pilots and program managers did not know what to expect. It was literally a big expanse of unknown. So they tested astronauts for everything - reasonable, unreasonable, and sometimes just idiotic or weird And you really should read the book - its available in Poland, and contains many scenes omitted in the movie (which is still very good )

[MinimumSky5]

I wonder does American aside Von Braun, taken Joseph Mengele too.

1. That wasn't Von Braun in the film, it was just a generic scientist.

2. Van Braun never worked on the Mercury program to my knowledge, he went straight to the Saturn rocket.

3. The things that Joseph Mengele did for "research" was probably the worst thing any human has personally done to any other individual in history, Von Braun may have been a member of the .... party, but that was only because in the high level post he held, he had to be for reasons of self preservation, he has multiple times stated that he would have had nothing to do with them had he had a choice in the matter.

[Whirligig Girl]

2. Van Braun never worked on the Mercury program to my knowledge, he went straight to the Saturn rocket..

He worked with Mercury-Redstone. The Redstone is in fact a direct decendant of the V-2. He did not, however, develop the Atlas rocket.

[Rickenbacker]

The Mercury Seven were indeed put through some pretty bizarre, and unnecessary tests. Later astronauts went though a much improved testing regime.

[Mazon Del]

NASA does some interesting out of the box tests when it comes to astronauts. I've been told by a few that an unofficially official part of the process for becoming one is that they will deny your application for like 5-10 years. The first few times without any word other than "Nope." and then progressively getting you further through the process, but still saying "Nope." each time. The reason for this being that they want people that won't give up if something looks hopeless. So if you can't deal with 10 years of rejection, no matter how hopeful things looked, you just aren't the sort of person they want in space that other people have to rely on.

[GigaG]

In the early days of manned space program, scientists, pilots and program managers did not know what to expect. It was literally a big expanse of unknown. So they tested astronauts for everything - reasonable, unreasonable, and sometimes just idiotic or weird And you really should read the book - its available in Poland, and contains many scenes omitted in the movie (which is still very good )

This is what I thought. They didn't know how space would affect a human, so they went though every possible test. That's what I've heard, at least.

[Kerbart]

This is what I thought. They didn't know how space would affect a human, so they went though every possible test. That's what I've heard, at least.

Exactly. Imagine your astronaut in orbit and he starts puking violently (a potentially life-threatening situation inside a space-suit in a zero-g environment). And then all scientists look at each other sheepishly.. “Oooh yeah, we didn't test that.â€Â

[WinkAllKerb'']

probably because of this ; )