Space Chimps: Circus in Space

May 30th, 2008

We have sent many things into space to study, but one of the more popular travelers (other than humans of course) are the monkeys. Sorry, not The Monkees, who I’m sure many wouldn’t mind seeing shot into space. Ever wonder about the Space Chimps? Chimps are a subject of evolution again, but not their transformation into us, but their help in the evolution of the space program.

A new documentary and a separate upcoming animated film are to show the early days of the U.S. space program, when chimpanzees preceded men into the great unknown of space.

“Most people don’t really want to acknowledge the chimpanzee missions as particularly historic,” said David Cassidy, director and producer of the documentary “One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps.”

Cassidy, dug up footage of the U.S. Air Force’s chimp program from the national archives and other sources, he also found press reels celebrating the exploits of the space chimps Ham and Enos. Ham paved the way for the first American to ever fly in space, Alan Shepherd, and Enos flew before just before John Glenn orbited the Earth.

“Most of the humans involved in the program grew very attached to the chimps and treated them very decently,” Cassidy told SPACE.com.

The Air Force eventually put its chimp colony up for sale after the first successful human spaceflight missions. Although Ham lived out the rest of his life at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, N.C., most chimps ended up at a biomedical research facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Nice thank you. Not even a gold Patek watch for their retirement.

Twenty one chimps were eventually rescued by Carole Noon, a biological anthropologist who sued the Air Force for custody and founded the Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care in Florida. The center now houses the largest chimp sanctuary in the world with over 135 residents.

Cassidy made the documentary after first hearing Noon’s story, because he thought the chimps “need to be treated with a certain level of dignity” after their contributions to the U.S. space program. He pointed to the Russians, who unveiled a monument to Laika the space dog this past April.

“It’s kind of fantastical when you think that we treated chimps like humans, trained them, dressed them up in space suits, and shot them up,” Cassidy said. “You see how it can inspire an animated film.”