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Two historic crew presentations stemming from William E. Thornton's work with the Body Mass Measurement Device, also known as Skylab Experiment M172:
- a flown 2.25˝ bolt from the Body Mass Measurement Device flown on the Skylab 2 (SLM-1) mission, affixed to an 11˝ x 8˝ wooden plaque, alongside and embroidered mission patch and an engraved plate: "To Bill Thornton, the Isaac Newton of Zero Gravity, we present this launch bolt from M172 which we spent so many happy (?) hours calibrating." The facsimile signatures of the Skylab 2 crew—Charles Conrad, Joe Kerwin, and Paul Weitz—are engraved below.
- a color semi-glossy 13.5 x 10.75 of Alan Bean measuring his body mass in the device's oscillating chair, affixed to its original 20 x 16 mount, signed on the mount in black felt tip by eight of the nine Skylab crewmen: Joe Kerwin, Paul Weitz, Alan Bean, Owen Garriott, Jack Lousma, Jerry Carr, Ed Gibson, and Bill Pogue.
In overall fine condition, with a few marks and dings to the photo's mount.
These two historic crew presentations commemorate astronaut-physician William E. Thornton’s work on one of Skylab’s deceptively difficult biomedical problems: how to 'weigh' an astronaut when there is effectively no weight. As principal investigator for Experiment M172, the Body Mass Measurement experiment, Thornton helped develop a chair-like device suspended on springs that determined mass from the period of the occupant’s back-and-forth oscillation rather than from the force of gravity. The instrument was used routinely aboard Skylab to track changes in crew body mass, an important measure of the physiological effects of long-duration spaceflight, and demonstrated that human mass could be measured accurately in zero gravity.
From the William E. Thornton Collection.
