Ham's  Adventure


    Once there a was chimpanzee named Ham who lived in the African Jungles of 
Cameroon. Little did we know he would be an American space hero.

 Here is his story:

                                                                                                                            
 Ham was captured from the African jungles to be used for lab research.  Ham and
several other chimps were trained by NASA engineers to prepare for a space mission.  Soon after, a few of the chimps exceeded 50 pounds and the numbers in the group declined.   After seeing which chimps were fit to train and examining the group for the most intelegent chimpanzee, they had to pick which chimp that was going up space.  That chimp was Ham.

Once the engineers felt that Ham was ready for the mission, they put him in his webbed jacket and soon there after "Rock and Roll".  Ham was put in a space capsule with little metal straps with wires hooked to it gave him a mild shock every time he did something too slow. And every time he did something right he was rewarded with sip of water from a small tube or a few banana flavored pellets.

Time for "blast off !" Poor Ham was showing fear in his eyes,fear and only
fear, fire bursted out of the capsule, and Ham was headed out to space. As the Mercury Red Stone Rocket (the rocket Hams capsule was in) flew away from earth, danger occured.

One hundred thirty-seven (137) seconds after the rocket took off and it was out of gas! MR-2 or in other words Mercery Red Stone was traveling too high, too fast.
A computer in the space-ship sensed things going wrong, as a result, retro-rockets were fired as the rocket shooted through space, though they were'nt supposed to fire untill the trip back to Earth to slow the speed.

Then finaly when he reached his highest point it began to come down towards earth. Then *BOOM* he landed in the Pacific Ocean. He bobbed like a cork for a while then the capsule began to food. It took the people three hours to find the capsule and get a helicopter to rescue him.  Ham did live through this exciting experience; however, he did not return to space ever again.

In loving memory of Ham :1958-1983


To find out more about Ham check out :    Spacechimp, NASA's Ape In Space
                                                                        By : Melinda Farbman and Frye Gaillard
                              Published in, Berkeley Heights by : Enslow Publishers, inc.  2000









                                      Enos: Space Chimp

November 29,1961 five year old Enos blasted off into space due to a terrible malfunction inside the capsule, enos was       shocked for any correct thing he did (totally different from
what Ham had to do) that was like a reward/punishment that he learned over his year of training

 Enos endured shocks and did the flight  tasks that he was sure that were right. Enos was taken on a two orbit trip and was landed alive. This flight qualified all systems for man to fly in space, and the year after (1962) John Glenn
 orbited Earth three times!        
                                                                                     
For more information about chimps in space go to : 

Save the Chimps











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