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Author Topic:   NASA spacesuit test subject Jackie Mays
Chuckster01
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Posts: 874
From: Orlando, FL
Registered: Jan 2014

posted 03-05-2019 06:51 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Chuckster01   Click Here to Email Chuckster01     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I am looking for any information on NASA engineer/test subject Jackie Mays who was involved in the testing of the Apollo A7L spacesuit.

Chuckster01
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Posts: 874
From: Orlando, FL
Registered: Jan 2014

posted 03-15-2019 06:36 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Chuckster01   Click Here to Email Chuckster01     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I will assume this means no one has any information at all? Anyone ever hear of him?

Rolf
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From: Netherlands
Registered: May 2007

posted 03-16-2019 06:40 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Rolf     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Bill Ayrey of ILC Dover can help.

Robert Pearlman
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From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 03-16-2019 07:05 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Mike Fox's NASA oral history mentions Mays.
The principal subject that they had here at the Manned Spacecraft Center at that time was a fellow by the name of Jackie [D.] Mays. Jackie was doing most of the chamber tests. He was a parachute rigger in the Navy, so he was pretty versed in working around pressure suits.

...Jackie [D.] Mays is another guy that you should interview. He did a lot of this test subject work before I ever got here. He was the principal test subject and probably the most knowledgeable guy of all.

Ken Mattingly mentions Mays as well:
I remember that since no one else wanted to do these things, that I got to be a test subject. They had a professional test subject, Jackie [Mays]. I can't think of his name now. Jackie — big, strapping, tough guy. I was a scrawny little runt. One of the deals was, space suits were rare and expensive, and so, you know, you didn't make space suits for the test subjects. You made space suits for flight crews, and then the test subjects would try to find the one that was closest to the right size.

Nothing fit me, and so I had Frank Borman's suit. Frank Borman and I are not the same size in any dimension, and it was really miserable in there. Old Jackie would help me. He was teaching me the ropes, being a test subject. So we got to be pretty good friends. As I learned more about it, I started getting involved in writing some of the test programs, since we built this. We sort of designed the requirements and the system together, then we kind of wrote the test program. It was just, just really fascinating.

As does Thomas Sanzone:
Yes, we routinely used other test subjects. There weren't many of them. One that I know the best is a guy by the name of Jack [Jackie D.] Mays. I don't know if you've ever interviewed him, but you might consider it. First of all I should say that in the Apollo program every astronaut had his own space suit. Matter of fact, most of them had three. The flight astronauts had a flight suit, they had a backup flight suit, and they had a training suit.

The life support systems were separable, so we didn't have life support systems assigned by name but ultimately only one life support system went with an astronaut to the Moon because they didn't come back. Jack Mays was the only person that I know who had his own space suit, only person who wasn't an astronaut who had his own space suit with his name on it. He did that many vacuum chamber training runs. There was another fellow that did some work over in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory, guy by the name of [Kenneth] Ken Dessert, who I still know today. He hasn't worked at NASA for decades, but I do run into him at church occasionally. But Jack Mays was the guy that did most of the "guinea pig" type runs to make sure that this stuff was going to work okay.

heng44
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From: Netherlands
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posted 03-17-2019 04:33 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for heng44   Click Here to Email heng44     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Here is Jackie Mays during a PLSS test in the 8-foot vacuum chamber at MSC in December 1968.

And this is Mattingly in Borman's suit during a PLSS flight unit verification test in the MSC altitude chamber on June 24, 1968. This was part of the LTA-8 vacuum chamber tests.

Rolf
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Posts: 21
From: Netherlands
Registered: May 2007

posted 03-17-2019 06:10 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Rolf     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Great pictures Ed.
quote:
Originally posted by Rolf:
Bill Ayrey of ILC Dover can help.
According to Bill Ayrey Jack Mays was the test subject for the first fitting of a Skylab suit (Suit Serial Number 601) on August 27, 1971 at ILC.

Chuckster01
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Posts: 874
From: Orlando, FL
Registered: Jan 2014

posted 03-17-2019 06:32 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Chuckster01   Click Here to Email Chuckster01     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Thank you so much, Truly great information.

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