In the early Space Age, weightlessness caused a more or less general freak-out. Medical experts worried about the consequences of "zero gravity" and what it would do to a living, breathing human being-his digestive system, vision, balance, and so forth. In February 1958, NASA and the Air Force tested a kitten in a fighter used to simulate weightlessness. The experts wondered about the cat's famous ability to quickly orient, when dropped, and land on its feet. Released at 25,000 feet, the feline experienced at most 40 seconds of weightlessness. The cat's reaction was described as "bewilderment." The first Project Mercury astronauts went through something similar in a special C-131 aircraft used to fly a "zero-g" trajectory. Fondly known as "the Vomit Comet"-for obvious reasons-it helped the early space voyagers adjust to the weirdness of weightlessness.
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