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tibees to 500 500 hello and welcome to
another exam unboxing video you might
have wondered in the past why I call it
an unboxing if there's no box but today
I've solved that problem and I have a
box I'm pretty excited to show you
what's inside here which is an exam from
1959 which was used to select astronauts
for the mercury program now mercury was
the first u.s. attempt at crewed space
flight and they aimed to put someone in
orbit around the earth as you can
imagine becoming a mercury astronaut
would have had pretty stringent
requirements and been pretty competitive
to get into so let's open up this box
and have a look at what they had to do
so let's open this up and have a look
inside we've got this document in here
which is actually a big report that's
been released from the US military
offices all about this exam so here's
the document here you can see that it's
the project mercury candidate evaluation
program and there were 31 astronaut
candidates who undertook all these exams
and they came from a background of being
military test pilots they had to be aged
between 25 and 40 there had to be
shorter than 5 foot 11 and have a
background of a stem degree although a
couple of them didn't meet that
requirement of the stem degree but they
managed to schmooze their way in anyway
out of 31 candidates 7 ended up being
selected to be mercury astronauts
there's a link in the description to
this full exam so you can read it goes
into a lot of details and a good insight
into what really makes up the right
stuff for an astronaut because
the committee have several reports and
summaries that they also detail here so
you could follow along if you'd like to
I haven't printed out all 147 pages here
but I will go through some of the tests
they were all designed to test the
stresses that an astronaut might go
through if they were on a mission and
those stresses as you can see from the
timetable could be psychological as well
as physical so if you look at say Monday
we've got a day filled with some psych
tests in the morning we've got
acceleration tests we've got physical
fitness tests we've got isolation and
complex behavioral simulator and also
just doing a lot of medical testing
they've got a full day and then they've
got a little break for dinner and then a
nice dessert of some more psychological
testing it's a pretty intense schedule
this was one full week of this exam but
there was a lot of preparation that
these candidates needed to do to be able
to prove themselves these are a couple
of pictures from the acceleration tests
where they would essentially exert the
astronauts to high accelerations or
g-forces and then measure when they left
out you can see here they would
accelerate them then take some
measurements accelerate them again in
various positions and then they would
rank them and give scores to how each
candidate did and I guess the longer you
can go without blacking out the better
this particular part I found pretty
interesting it's an intelligibility
measure and for this say I guess really
practically wanted to know how easy it
would be for an astronaut to communicate
back down to Mission Control and how
easy it would be to understand them so
they gave them the list of words to read
out and then play those words to a panel
of listeners but they mixed in plenty of
noise I was a little difficult to hear
them and then they did some statistics
on which candidates were easier to
understand a very practical measure I
guess this one here is pretty cool we've
got the effect of noise on the ability
to perform addition you know noise is
capable of interfering with effective
human
activity this test is designed to
measure the effects of high noise levels
on the performance of a simple mental
task so with an intense annoyance of a
hundred and forty five decibels being
produced by a siren the candidates had
to add up a string of numbers until it
reached the total so adding up these
ones until it reached 35 and then put a
dash on you know once they'd reach 35
maybe not too hard on its own but
certainly difficult under the stress of
dealing with all this noise so here's a
picture of one of these exams right here
and this is our sound generator we've
got heat tests which are literally how
well a subject can cope with heat
they're talking about how space vehicles
are expected to heat to sustain high
temperatures especially during the
period of reentry it is therefore necessary to
see how men can withstand this heat and
since some can withstand it better than
others they want to know who would be
the best so it looks like they were
essentially just exerting them to a lot
of heat and measuring you know some
biological factors maybe how your hearts
going you can see this guy sweating up
whilst reading a book there so that's
kind of funny I won't talk too much
about these biological tests but there's
another one here that at least you could
try at home which is the Harvard step
test which seems like you're just
stepping up and down from a platform
except you are doing it with a metronome
and you know you have to step up and the
first second sit down on the second
second and then step up on the third
second and continue now for five minutes
here's a picture of that step test here
now we're getting on to the interesting
chapter which is the psychological tests
now there's a few qualities here that
they say they're looking for you know
they say he should have a high level of
intelligence with abilities to interpret
instruments perceive mathematical
relationships and maintain spatial
orientation in the mercury program there
were no female astronauts
I guess because they were also no female
military test pilots at the time so the
language reflects that but number two he
should demonstrate in
of sufficient Drive and creativity to
ensure positive contributions to the
development of the vehicle and other
aspects of the project as a whole so
those are a couple of things that they
were looking for this one seems
interesting he should not demonstrate
evidence of impulsivity so I guess this
is the psychology of having the right
stuff as they say the psychological
tests were taken pretty seriously it
says that the evaluation included 30
hours of psychiatric interviews
psychological tests and observations of
the stressful tests they were measuring
all these sorts of factors here through
these tests so all of these aspects of
your personality I guess and this is how
they were actually doing it so these are
the tests they were using and some of
these are still used today so we've got
the Rorschach test which is where you try
to say what you can find and some
ambiguous inkpots it's apparently able
to probe relatively deep into the
personality we're doing a draw a person
test so by drawing male and female human
figures the subject gives information of
his body image and feelings about his
place in the world they asked them to
complete a bunch of sentences to give
further insight into their personalities
a few of these other I guess ranging
from like multiple-choice things and
then down to number 12 which is Who am I
the subject is asked to write 20 answers
to the question Who am I this is
interpreted predictably to give
information on identity and perception
of social roles then on this page we
have the intellectual tests so these are
essentially how they're measuring the
intelligence of the candidates and
they've done it through to at least 12
different kinds of tests and I've got a
few example problems here which are
supposed to replicate some of the
tests so like we have analogies that's
often something that pops up on sort of
intelligence tests like this and we have
some examples so for example a
parallelogram is to an octagon as to
what is t quadruped  four biped
eight or animal I'll put the answers to
these down in the description so that
you have a chance to try them yourself
another example here is metabolism as to
what as combustion is to locomotive
engine train human or anabolism after
analogies that say they've got Raven
progressive matrices said I've got a
couple examples of those these are
things that look similar to what pop up
on IQ tests trying to look at what's
going on find some pattern and then pick
the one that completes the pattern so
that's another example there of one of
these matrices
we've got mathematical reasoning tests
engineering analogies and mechanical
comprehension I guess that's where a
background and maybe engineering or
something like physics would come in
handy so like extending the reach of the
crane will shift its what total weight
allowable speed center of gravity center
of buoyancy seeing how well you
understand a essentially physics why
does the intake valve open on this pump
when the piston goes down well there's a
few different options to do with where
the air pressure is going to be greater
we've got some air force and aviation
tests a measure of academic achievement
space memory test of memory for locating
objects in space spatial orientation as
well and spatial visualization so you
can see how those would come in handy in
the space to know you know when when no
direction is up what how things are
going to rotate so they give us a clock
and they say that's the direction of
rotation so what is the clock going to
look like after that right
and another one here that undergoes one
to three different rotations and what
the clock is going to look like the last
example I have here is this hidden
figures test an ability of measure to
locate a specified form embedded in a
mass of irrelevant details these ones
are kind of tricky but somewhere in this
shape here you will find one of these
shapes in the same orientation so you
can have a little look there and that is
another example of it in addition to all
these intelligence tests like I said
they're really just trying to test the
stress that you would be under so that's
when they have isolation and behavioral
and pressure suit tests which I think
can be quite actually a claustrophobic
one on this page here is a picture of
the evaluation committee so this was who
they were trying to impress and these
are the people who then wrote up some
thoughts about you know who they were
actually going to select there's a few
notes here about why they didn't pick
particular candidates one candidate was
not entirely sure that he desired to
continue on in Project Mercury one
candidate had a heart murmur and one had
a very high index of strain as a result
of performance on the heat test they
then ranked all of them and and scored
them on each of the tests which enabled
them to come up with a final table of
recommendations I don't know who was who
on here but some of these ultimately
went on to be our astronauts there was
some if it made by the committee to do
some statistics and finding a
correlation between the data they got
from these tests and what actually made
for a successful mission so that they
could improve astronaut selection in the
future there's some notes here that are
interesting they say that number one
psychological stability is the most
important consideration in evaluating a
candidate the intelligence maturity and
motivation of a candidate are vital
areas to be assessed before rendering
and recommendation number two is the
excellent physiological performance was
a secondary consideration in the final
committee recommendations so no matter
how strong and healthy you are you
really need to pass these intelligence
and psychology personality tests that we
spoke about interestingly enough when it
talks about these stressful
physiological tests maybe that's like
the heat test the acceleration or the
pressure suit what they are really
looking at was the interpretation of the
psychological response to that stress
test it says that whenever a subject
terminated a severe test for a
psychological reason he was not
recommended by the committee maybe if
you pass out it's fine but if you want
to terminate for psychological reasons
that is a mark against you so I hope
that's been a little bit of insight into
how these sorts of decisions were made
and how astronauts were actually chosen
I've gained a lot of insight recently
into modern astronaut selection by
listening to Chris Hadfield audio book
and astronauts guide to life on Earth
where he talks a lot about his own
preparation and journey to becoming an
astronaut things might have changed a
little bit since the mercury days if
anything space flights might be a bit
longer you could be on the ISS for
months at a time but these psychological
factors I think are even more important
to test in that case you need to be able
to live in cramped conditions and work
with other people for a long time if you
would like to listen to an astronaut's
guide to life on Earth or any other
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