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That time a monkey flew to the edge of space and then smashed into a destroyer [arstechnica.com]

The flight

By then Sam had already had quite a ride. Housed inside a 36-inch by 18-inch container within the capsule, Sam had been launched atop a Little Joe rocket. At one minute into the flight, traveling at 3,685mph, the Mercury capsule’s abort system fired. In his contour couch, Sam experienced 10 to 12Gs before a little more than three minutes of weightlessness, reaching a peak altitude of about 53 miles. The capsule’s pressure fell from 1 atmosphere to about half of that during the flight.

And then the Mercury capsule fell into the turbulent seas off the Virginia coast, bouncing around and waiting for Thompson and the Navy to come and pick him up. Eventually, the ship tracked Sam's capsule down.

As Thompson watched, deckhands worked with a long aluminum rod that had a hook on the end. With the ship and capsule swaying back and forth, the goal was to hook the rod into an improvised latch on top of the Mercury capsule, which looked something like the handle of an Easter basket. But then, just as the capsule was hooked, the captain stopped the ship.

A wrecking ball

“So the ship is really rolling, and the capsule is out there like a wrecking ball,” Thompson recalled.

"And then, all of a sudden, BAM!

"It's thrown up against the side of the ship.

"It goes back out and BAM! Up against the side of the ship again.

"I’m down there on the deck and after the second BAM! I told the coxswain to loose the line. Then the thing hit again and got hung up on the deck. We threw a lasso around it and washed a sailor overboard in the process.” (He was later recovered).

Surprisingly, the capsule wasn’t damaged much. But what of Sam, who had flown to the edge of space and then been tossed and crashed around back on Earth?

“The monkey was inside in a large aluminum can, which was bolted down. We took the top off, and I crooked my finger and put it down in there. He took a hold of it. So we got some [diagonal wire cutters] to cut him out of his contour couch. I set him down and told the chief petty officer to go get some apples and oranges. The monkey was hungry. He ate up most of the oranges.”

After the flight, an analysis of electrocardiogram, respiration, body temperature, eye movements, and other measurements showed no abnormal results from Sam's physiological and psychological reactions. He'd survived the ordeal, appetite intact. Sam, who had come from the US Air Force School of Aviation Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas, returned home. He lived a long life, dying in 1982, when his remains were cremated.

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