[AR] Re: body mass and size of Apollo astronauts
- From: Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 13:56:13 -0400 (EDT)
On Wed, 9 Oct 2013, Neil Jaschinski wrote:
> At the beginning of the Apollo project, I think every pound count. So I
> was wondering if the astronaut has to lose weight to get the last
> missing pounds? I got this question when I saw documentation about
> Apollo 11. Michael Collins looks really thin on this footage...
No, the astronauts were expected to keep themselves in good physical
condition, but there weren't even any actual standards for that, much less
a requirement that they lose weight at the last minute.
Collins is not a representative case -- he was possibly the most athletic
guy in the whole astronaut corps at the time. Whereas Neil Armstrong was
reputed to have once said that he thought everybody was allocated a fixed
number of heartbeats, and he didn't propose to waste any of his doing
unnecessary exercise!
> The second question I get was about the body size. Smaller astronauts
> mean smaller capsules. I know the size limitation for Russian cosmonauts.
> So, does anybody have a document with the body size and mass of the
> Apollo astronauts?
I'm sure the data can be found, but I don't have it on hand. There was a
height limit for Apollo, to avoid having to design the hardware to
accommodate exceptionally tall people, but it wasn't severe: 6 feet.
There was no attempt to deliberately pick small people to permit smaller
capsules. (The Mercury capsule was decidedly cramped, and so the height
limit for Mercury astronauts was tighter, but that was a result of small
rockets and a short-term program with limited objectives.)
Henry Spencer
henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
(regexpguy@xxxxxxxxx)
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