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Fascinating Project Gemini medical research archive from the collection of Dr. Joseph John Combs, Jr., a medical director at McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Missouri, highlighting his pioneering work with biomedical recorders—particularly electrocardiography used to track the heart rates of Gemini astronauts during extended exposure to zero gravity. The archive contains various medical readings, data charts, flight reports, and in-house articles related to the Gemini program and missions 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, and 12. Highlights include:
- Incomplete 6-page medical report for the Gemini 3 and Gemini 4 missions, which includes initial findings on heart rate, blood pressure, and weight loss of Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White and Jim McDivitt, as well as ‘Lessons Learned’ from the Gemini 3 flight for astronauts John Young and Gus Grissom, which contains sections like ‘First-Flight Syndrome,’ ‘Medical Lessons of the Flight,’ ‘Grissom-Young Differences,’ ‘No Blood Pressure Telemetry for Grissom,’ and ‘Waste Elimination.’
- Two stapled reports for the Gemini 7 flight, both prepared by Peter Kellaway and Robert Maulsby: Preliminary Evaluation of Altitude Chamber Test of EEG Recording System to Be Used in M-8 Experiment During GT-7 Flight (September 27, 1965); and Preliminary Report: M-8 Experiment: Inflight Sleep Analysis, Gemini VII Flight.”
- Two medical ‘Aeromed Brief’ printouts for the Gemini 9 mission, both annotated in felt tip, “Prelaunch - S/C 9, June 1 aborted launch, CP Stafford, P Cernan” and “Prelaunch - S/C 9, June 3 launch, CP Stafford, P Cernan,” which contain EKG descriptions and read, in part: “Crew Suiting and Ingress on Schedule, Bio Inst Satisfactory” and “All Biomed parameter are of good quality. Resp. Excursions are shallow for CP, large P, easily read on both.”
- Two medical packets for the Gemini 10 mission, with handwritten cover sheets from “Henry,” which read: “Here are the flight data for Gemini-X. I do not know what ‘A’ & ‘L’ are – assuming that ‘H’ is heart-rate and ‘R’ is resp. rate. Hope you know what ‘A’ and ‘L’ are. Let me know if you want a skeleton flight plan so you can correlate these data with flight activity” and “Gemini-X, Heart Rate & Respiration Rate / CP = Command Pilot - Young / P = Pilot - Collins, A = Average heart rate, H = highest heart rate, L = lowest heart rate, R = respiration rate.”
- Stapled medical packet of Teletypewriter Exchange Service (TWX) sheets for the Gemini 12 mission, with handwritten cover sheet from “Henry” that reads: “Gemini - 12, Heart Rate & Respiration Rate / Joe – This is a Xerox copy of all the medical TWX’s issued during the S/C 12 mission. The dark hand-written notes are mine, giving the mission time (from launch), CP = Command Pilot (Lovell), P = Pilot (Aldrin), A = average heart rate, H = highest heart rate, L = lowest heart rate, R = respiration rate.”
- Stapled packet from McDonnell Aircraft entitled “Department 242 / NASA Gemini Thermodynamics Technical Note No. 203 / Thermal Analysis of Extravehicular Life-Support System (ELSS),” with handwritten cover sheet from “Henry” that reads, in part: “The attached note is rather thorough evaluation of the metabolic heat rejection performance of the EVA chestpacks on Gemini…At present, effort is now directed towards liquid-cooled garment for EVA, similar to the Apollo Block II underwear. This will not only permit greater metabolic rates, but also decrease the oxygen expenditure.”
- Hand-annotated sheet entitled ‘Tape for Teaching,’ which contains ‘Tape Footage’ data and medical notes on the original Mercury astronauts: Deke Slayton, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Gordon Cooper, and John Glenn.
The balance of the archive contains sundry articles, printouts, notes, and reports compiled by Combs during his career. In overall fine condition. Accompanied by a letter of authenticity from Combs’s son, who writes: “Dr. Combs was focused primarily on the biomedical recorders, and more specifically on ECG (cardiac) recordations to record heart rate during prolonged exposure to zero-G. As such, he interacted closely and daily with the Gemini astronauts, attaching and removing biomedical recording leads and interviewing them about perceived effects of induced space conditions…Dr. Combs became personal friends with many of the astronauts…I hereby certify and attest that the space memorabilia in the collection being auctioned are the real and actual articles gifted to my father, Dr. Combs, by the Gemini astronauts during the time my father served as a medical director at McDonnell Aircraft in the 1960s.”
