Posts: 180
From: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Registered: Apr 2019

posted 04-03-2020 01:07 PM            

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I believe the Mercury astronauts only underwent desert survival training. There was no jungle survival training. The first time the astronauts underwent jungle survival training was a month after the Mercury Program ended in 1963.

Given that most of the Mercury capsules splashed down in the Caribbean, one might think jungle survival training might have been part of their training. Why did they not receive this training?

Posts: 43576
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 04-03-2020 02:07 PM               

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Colin Burgess addresses this in his 2013 book, "Moon Bound: Choosing and Preparing NASA's Lunar Astronauts."

The [jungle] training was deemed necessary by NASA officials when they realized that the longer Gemini missions would require the spacecraft to travel over a greater area of the globe, raising the possibility, albeit remote, of a crew making an emergency landing in a tropical area.

This [June 1963 instruction] not only marked the first time that astronauts received tropical survival training, but also the first time all seven Mercury astronauts and nine new astronauts took a training program together.

Posts: 971
From: Perth, Western Australia
Registered: Apr 2015