Studying the effects of weightlessness on a living mammal at 25,000′; ca. 1958
I feel like that is the worst animal to bring on an experimental trip in a jet cockpit. I wonder if that pilot got peed on after this…
From The Times Magazine, a “Portrait of the Ideal Space Man,” if not the ideal space cat, from February 1958. As experts were contemplating the medical specifics of what weightlessness in space would do to a living, breathing human being, an unlucky kitten was volunteered as a stand-in, floating from the hand of Capt. Druey P. Parks inside an F-94C jet at 25,000 feet. The article, by Donald G. Cooley, characterized the cat’s reaction as “bewilderment.”
(I think “bewilderment” is the understatement of the century. More like vicious, claws-bared, wild-eyed, “HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT I’M GONNA CLAW MY WAY OUT OF THIS HELLHOLE, FLYBOY!” Grade-A homicidal panic.)
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 