Everyone should know about Gallaudet 11 and why they're to thank for the United State's ability to go to space.
Gallaudet 11 was a group of 11 deaf men who went to Gallaudet University. Most of these men went deaf at a young age because they got spinal meningitis and this caused damage to the vestibular systems of their inner ears. (The vestibular system (quote) "functions to detect the position and movement of our head in space. This allows for the coordination of eye movements, posture, and equilibrium. It helps to accomplish this task by sending afferent nerve signals from its individual components." (end quote))
Because of this, none of them experience motion sickness. So, from 1958 to 1968, NASA and the U.S. Naval School of Aviation Medicine recruited these 11 men to study the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body.
Without this research, NASA would not know sending people to space is possible.
The men's names are:
Harold Domich
Robert Greenmun
Barron Gulak
Raymond Harper
Jerald Jordan
Harry Larson
David Myers
Donald Peterson
Raymond Piper
Alvin Steele
John Zakutney
You can learn about some of the specific experiments that were performed on NASA.gov. [Link]
