Although Ham had no children, Save the Chimps is proud to have provided a peaceful retirement for other survivors and descendants of the space chimp program.Īs Dr. We honor and remember Ham and all of the young chimpanzees who suffered through the tragic deaths of their mothers and the transatlantic journey to the United States to become test subjects for space flight. It speaks to Ham’s character, intelligence, and bravery. Humans are often considered more intelligent than chimpanzees, yet it is hard to imagine a human toddler performing as well as Ham in this challenging task. If Ham had not been kidnapped and his mother killed, he still would have been nursing at age 3 ½, dependent on his mother for survival. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this story is often lost in all of the writings about Ham: he was a baby. His courage and heroism paved the way for Alan Shepard, Jr., the first American in space. Ham not only survived the flight, but performed his tasks correctly, despite the rigors of space flight and the fear he must have experienced. Ham’s flight is remarkable for many reasons. He died 22 years after his historic flight into space, on January 18, 1983, at the estimated age of 26. He was transferred to The National Zoo in 1963, where he lived alone for 17 years, before finally being sent to the North Carolina Zoo where he could live with other chimps. Unlike the rest of the space chimps, Ham was spared decades of biomedical research, but he did have a lonely existence for many years. Photographers wanted another shot of Ham in his “couch.” Ham refused to go back into it, and multiple adult men were unable to force him to do so. That fear was demonstrated again sometime later through an act of defiance. Although interpreted as a happy smile by many people, Ham’s expression was one of extreme fear and anxiety. When he was finally released from the “couch” however, his face bore an enormous grin. It took several hours for a recovery ship to reach Ham, but miraculously he was alive and relatively calm considering his ordeal. After the flight, Ham’s capsule splashed down 130 miles from its target, and began taking on water. Incredibly, despite the intense speed, g-forces, and weightlessness, Ham performed his tasks correctly. He experienced about 6 ½ minutes of weightlessness. He travelled at a speed of approximately 5800 mph, to a height of 157 miles above the earth. Ham’s flight lasted approximately 16 ½ minutes. On January 31, 1961, after several hours of waiting on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, FL, 3 ½ year old Ham was propelled into space, strapped into a container called a “couch.” After 18 months of training, Ham was selected as the chimpanzee whose life would be risked to test the safety of space flight on the ape body. Ham at the time was known as Chang, or #65, and was renamed at the time of his spaceflight after the acronym for “Holloman Aero Medical.” Ham and other young chimpanzees, including Minnie (the mother of two STC residents, Rebel and Li’l Mini) and Enos (who would become the first and only chimpanzee to orbit the Earth), were habituated to long periods of confinement in a chair, and trained to operate levers in response to light cues. In July 1959, Ham was transferred to Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, NM, to be trained for space flight as part of Project Mercury. Born in Cameroon in approximately 1957, Ham was captured and brought to a facility in Florida called the Miami Rare Bird Farm. Ham’s story spans the globe and into the reaches of space.
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