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Almost everything we know on the topic came from those dogs and the people who suffered accidents. It's the really unpleasant side of industrial and extreme env

Almost everything we know on the topic came from those dogs and the people who suffered accidents. It's the really unpleasant side of industrial and extreme environment danger: intuition just isn't enough to make big decisions on. The alternative is learning through trial and error, and industrial accidents teach us that is enormously bloody, expensive, and reactionary. If it helps, every major write-up on the topic talks about what the dogs went through. A high price was paid, but they aren't forgotten nor did they suffer in vain - and most made a full recovery in fairly short order. You can be sure countless lives across space exploration will be saved because we'll know who can be saved and what's needed to bring them back.

Houshalter 11y ago
I'm disturbed by their choice to use dogs of all animals. And especially chimps, which are very very close to humans. I'm disturbed that the experiment needed to be done 100's of times. The first few times might be understandable, but what do you really learn from throwing the 125th dog into the vacuum chamber? And I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I don't believe this specific experiment needed to be done at all. Really, what did we learn? That bad things happen when you are exposed to a vacuum? No shit. It's at best interesting. But you'd be really hard pressed to find any practical application of this knowledge. I've never been against animal experimentation before. I was always uncomfortable with it, but I just accepted the standard argument that it's necessary, and never looked too closely into the actual details. But something about this just went over the line, especially the horrific detailed description of the dogs and chimps suffering.
- DanBC 11y ago
  For what it's worth a lot of people agree with you and so the rules about vivisection are much stricter now. There are probably people on HN who work with animals who can talk about how easy / hard it would be to perform this kind of testing on dogs in the EU / US today.
- HCIdivision17 11y ago
  I think this is the actual study: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660005052.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1966000... I fundamentally dissagree that it was trivial, but I worked on large vacuum systems and feel a bit close to the topic. But I also fundamentally agree that the experimentation was barbaric and cruel. But... I also don't see how we could have worked around it. I hope it's some consolation that they never doubly-exposed the dogs; I'm actually surprised that wasn't attempted. Unshielded hard vacuum is horrific. The problem isn't that it's awful - that's obvious - but exactly how does it affect the body? (I've sealed a hole with my hand and got a hickey, but I've never been immersed in it.) Even today, studying things in a vacuum is difficult; it's always behind a think layer of material that's hard to observe through, and even with cleverness you're testing through the neck of a bottle or only looking back on data logged by some gizmo. And there are a lot of confounding variables; narrowing the time-to-unconciousness/death was the most critical, and each test batch needed multiple samples to make sure no data was wasted. One note that came out was that it seems clearly better to recompress with pure oxygen; would that fire hazard be worth the risk in space (especially after Apollo 1), or would they need to design a mechanism to temporarily mange it? I could see that argument having a significant impact on the cabin design. But yeah. We can do better. A damn sight better. We can illuminate and record and monitor so much better. A couple years ago I stuck a 20 dollar pen camera in a machine and captured video - with sound - at such an unbelievably higher resolution and fidelity than what they had eked out at incredible cost; it's downright heartbreaking to think what they could have done today instead. Hell, we could probably now just simulate portions of the effects. I'd hope the scale of this experiment would never need to be repeated today. We're likely at the point where we can risk learning from accidents now. Addendum: Here's an interesting clip about a year later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8L9tKR4CY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8L9tKR4CY EDIT: `curtis beat me to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819055 I wouldn't pay too much heed to the commentary, since we can be sure the test pilot's survival wasn't miraculous at all - he was repressurized fast enough survival was very likely. But you can see how primitive it was, and how little was understood. That one accident was so useful, simply because the subject was concious for a few seconds and could talk about it. I'm glad (at least hopeful) we're past that sort of groping in the dark. EDIT: Whoops, Apollo 1 happened two years later. I remembered it had a full oxygen environment for - IIRC - keeping the astronauts more alert and safer at low pressures. I'd be interested to know if that was informed by the dog/chimp study, and if they only reversed their decision for a full oxygenated cabin after the crew burned alive. These days I just assume all safe industry/procedures came from someone's loss.

Houshalter 11y ago

I'm disturbed by their choice to use dogs of all animals. And especially chimps, which are very very close to humans. I'm disturbed that the experiment needed to be done 100's of times. The first few times might be understandable, but what do you really learn from throwing the 125th dog into the vacuum chamber? And I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I don't believe this specific experiment needed to be done at all. Really, what did we learn? That bad things happen when you are exposed to a vacuum? No shit. It's at best interesting. But you'd be really hard pressed to find any practical application of this knowledge. I've never been against animal experimentation before. I was always uncomfortable with it, but I just accepted the standard argument that it's necessary, and never looked too closely into the actual details. But something about this just went over the line, especially the horrific detailed description of the dogs and chimps suffering.

DanBC 11y ago
For what it's worth a lot of people agree with you and so the rules about vivisection are much stricter now. There are probably people on HN who work with animals who can talk about how easy / hard it would be to perform this kind of testing on dogs in the EU / US today.
HCIdivision17 11y ago
I think this is the actual study: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660005052.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1966000... I fundamentally dissagree that it was trivial, but I worked on large vacuum systems and feel a bit close to the topic. But I also fundamentally agree that the experimentation was barbaric and cruel. But... I also don't see how we could have worked around it. I hope it's some consolation that they never doubly-exposed the dogs; I'm actually surprised that wasn't attempted. Unshielded hard vacuum is horrific. The problem isn't that it's awful - that's obvious - but exactly how does it affect the body? (I've sealed a hole with my hand and got a hickey, but I've never been immersed in it.) Even today, studying things in a vacuum is difficult; it's always behind a think layer of material that's hard to observe through, and even with cleverness you're testing through the neck of a bottle or only looking back on data logged by some gizmo. And there are a lot of confounding variables; narrowing the time-to-unconciousness/death was the most critical, and each test batch needed multiple samples to make sure no data was wasted. One note that came out was that it seems clearly better to recompress with pure oxygen; would that fire hazard be worth the risk in space (especially after Apollo 1), or would they need to design a mechanism to temporarily mange it? I could see that argument having a significant impact on the cabin design. But yeah. We can do better. A damn sight better. We can illuminate and record and monitor so much better. A couple years ago I stuck a 20 dollar pen camera in a machine and captured video - with sound - at such an unbelievably higher resolution and fidelity than what they had eked out at incredible cost; it's downright heartbreaking to think what they could have done today instead. Hell, we could probably now just simulate portions of the effects. I'd hope the scale of this experiment would never need to be repeated today. We're likely at the point where we can risk learning from accidents now. Addendum: Here's an interesting clip about a year later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8L9tKR4CY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8L9tKR4CY EDIT: `curtis beat me to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819055 I wouldn't pay too much heed to the commentary, since we can be sure the test pilot's survival wasn't miraculous at all - he was repressurized fast enough survival was very likely. But you can see how primitive it was, and how little was understood. That one accident was so useful, simply because the subject was concious for a few seconds and could talk about it. I'm glad (at least hopeful) we're past that sort of groping in the dark. EDIT: Whoops, Apollo 1 happened two years later. I remembered it had a full oxygen environment for - IIRC - keeping the astronauts more alert and safer at low pressures. I'd be interested to know if that was informed by the dog/chimp study, and if they only reversed their decision for a full oxygenated cabin after the crew burned alive. These days I just assume all safe industry/procedures came from someone's loss.