Duane Graveline MD MPH
USAF Flight Surgeon
NASA Astronaut

Ejection Seat Training

I will never forget ejection seat training. The explosive shell, the ejection seat technician held in his hand, contained about two sticks of dynamite.

I could remember seeing dynamite as a child when electricity was first brought to my grandfather's farm. Some of the holes had to be blasted because of ledge (solid rock).

One blast showered them with small stones even though they were under a big maple tree hundreds of yards away. And that was just one stick. Now this guy was telling me that this was the charge that was to launch my ejection seat fifty feet straight up. With me in it!

If we thought we were apprehensive about rapid decompression in the chamber to 100,000 feet, we as a group really were concerned about this deal.

"Now remember, keep your arms and legs inside the seat, visor down, pull out the lanyard on your bailout bottle, look straight ahead, squeeze the red handle on the left armrest to blow your canopy and squeeze the red handle on your right armrest to fire your seat."

The rapid decompression was nothing. There, we had been passive and had to remember only one thing, to breath out. Now I was actively involved with what seemed like a lot to remember. Admittedly, since then the process of ejection has been simplified.

The bailout bottle was to ensure 100% oxygen to my mask for at least eight minutes in case I was ejecting at high altitude. Each of us had the facial expression of someone about to be hanged as we squeezed the right handle.

With a roar the rocket seat took off, erupting smoke and flames. In the blink of an eye, I was fifty feet up, my ride was over, I was still alive and slowly riding the track down to the starting position. Repeat trips were offered. Each of us declined.

My motto remained; if the pilots do it I did it. But I certainly did not want to be selfish about using up valuable training resources.

The seven Mercury astronauts were selected. Their names would remain fixed in the minds of people the world over. Although other men would become astronauts and would have key roles in the space program culminating with the Apollo lunar landing, the original Mercury Seven would forever have the stage in the minds of the public.

Although doctors were not yet eligible for astronaut selection, I knew they would be in time and would carefully guide my career in that direction. Things do not just happen. They are made to happen.

My Two-G Mice

My exploration into the resources available at the lab revealed a small animal centrifuge. This discovery gave me the idea for super-mice, raised at two gravities then re-exposed to one gravity.

I thought this would yield some interesting findings, complementary to my zero gravity human de-conditioning studies. Presumably, mice adapted to two G's and then returned to one G would show changes comparable to those occurring when a one G organism is exposed to zero gravity.

First I had to find out about mice. The small animal laboratory had just about any animal you could want and in any quantity along with instructions for their care and feeding. I then had to go to the machine shop to have cages made which were gimbaled and would be attached to the rim of the centrifuge. I wanted to be able to water and feed the mice without stopping the centrifuge. It was to turn continuously for two months.

"I want twenty pregnant females within two days of delivery," I instructed the airman in the animal facility who was taking his order.
"Let me know immediately when they arrive."

The great day finally came while I was away, but Gene Schumpert picked up the mice, put the test mice in the centrifuge cages, started up the wheel, and slowly adjusted to two gravities taking 24 hours to accomplish it.

I arrived a day later and everything looked good. The automatic waterers and feeders were working and it looked like this was going to be a simple and easy study. Famous last words.

"When did you say they were going to deliver?" I asked Gene.

"According to what they told me...yesterday," Gene replied.

We looked in the cages along the rim of the rapidly spinning centrifuge as well as we could but couldn't spot the babies.

"Well give it another two days, then stop the wheel and do a count," I said.

Two days later, I gradually stopped the centrifuge so as to disturb the mothers and offspring as little as possible. I popped open cage after cage and all we had was fat healthy females.

There was one difference - this time their large size was not pregnancy, it was gluttony (and stress). They had delivered and eaten all their young with no survivors! The mother mice came out about the same, weight-wise.

My contingency plan was to use weanling mice of about seventeen days of age and this worked fine. At the end of two months on the wheel I had a small army of super-mice.

X-rays revealed astonishing differences in their skeletons when compared with littermate controls raised in the axis of the wheel. Even their tailbones were highly calcified and dense.

When they crawled on my arm they felt unusually strong and they were fast. Other than muscles and bones, I studied heart size. I found their hearts to be much larger, comparable to those of highly conditioned athletes.

I re-examined them one and two months later and found by two months most of the changes had normalized. I intended to publish this but never did get to it. I also intended to continue research in this fascinating field, if I could just find the time.

Galactic Cosmic Radiation

Doctor David Simons was both a friend and associate during those wonderful years. He was focusing on radiobiology by studying black rats flown in stratospheric balloons.

When I asked him why he chose black rats only, he proudly showed me his animals, peppered with white streaks, each streak representing a hit by a cosmic ray (heavy primary) during their exposure at twenty miles high. If he had used white rats, this observation would never have been made.

He demonstrated quite conclusively that heavy primaries cause changes in biologic tissue. Black hair follicles become white! This became very interesting to me as I reviewed astronaut and cosmonaut reports of retinal flashes at times during their missions; with the best scientific explanation being that these flashes represent heavy primary strikes on the retina and or brain.

Is it possible that tissue changes are occurring which we, as yet, are unable to measure? Doctor Simons followed his experimental animals on one historic mission into the stratosphere for over 32 hours as part of Operation Manhigh II, in which he set a new altitude record of 101,516 feet (30,942 meters) - almost 20 miles high.

I was in a researcher’s paradise. You were limited only by your imagination.

Duane Graveline MD MPH
Former USAF Flight Surgeon
Former NASA Astronaut
Retired Family Doctor

July 2016

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