"SPACE” TEST ENDS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28514, 18 February 1958, Page 11

"SPACE” TEST ENDS

Airman’s Seven Days In Cabin

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SAN ANTONIO (Texas), Feb. 16. Donald Farrell, the 23-year-old airman who has spent the last week in a sealed 3ft by sft compartment, stepped cheerfully back into the world today. Farrell had been in the cabin, unable to see anything but the instruments in front of him, or hear anything but his own voice, long enough to go to the moon and back—and in as close an approximation as possible to the conditions in which man would make such a flight. Except for a short period on Friday, when five day’s’ accumulated weariness and mental strain caught up with him, and seriously slowed his reaction to the constant tests and problems posed to try his alertness, Farrell remained cheerful, interested, and alert in a way which has amazed the doctors at the School of Aviation Medicine in San Antonio, where the test has been held. Even when he did slow down, and watchers were afraid for a time that Farrell was going to press the button that would end the test and release him, a short sleep seemed to restore his alertness.

Farrell stepped from the experimental space cabin exactly seven days after he entered it last Sunday morning. The tall, blonde airman stepped from the space cabin smiling and apparently none the worse for his experience.