MONKEY BUSINESS

When our country was preparing to explore space in the 1950's, NASA instituted the Mercury Program with the stated goal of putting a man into space and into orbit around the Earth. As part of that program, some twenty unmanned flights were undertaken. Four of those flights carried primates.

In December of 1959, a monkey named Sam was the first living creature we sent toward space. A month later, a female monkey named Miss Sam got her chance to take a suborbital flight (the space people weren't much for thinking up names for their monkeys). A year later in January 1961, we sent a chimpanzee named Ham on a suborbital flight. Sam Shepard then became the first American to take a suborbital flight in May of that year and Gus Grissom did the same in July.

In November of 1961, a chimp named Enos was sent into space and orbited the Earth twice before returning in splash-down fashion. Finally, John Glenn took off in February of 1962 for the first American manned orbital space flight.

I don't think we could do this today...PETA just wouldn't let us put those animals at risk.


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