Project Adam was a proposed plan by the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

for a manned,

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will no ...

rocket flight. It was developed in 1958, in parallel with the United States Air Force's

Project Manhigh Project Manhigh was a pre-Space Age military project that took men in Balloon (aircraft), balloons to the middle layers of the stratosphere, funded as an aero-medical research program, though seen by its designers as a stepping stone to space. It ...

, and was initially called ''Project Man Very High''. The twin aims were to gather scientific data on high-altitude flight and to enhance national prestige in the wake of the successful launch of the Soviet Union's

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program ...

. A further goal was to investigate the possibility of troop transport by ballistic missile.

History

The plan involved using off-the-shelf hardware to send a passenger on a steep ballistic flight from

Cape Canaveral Cape Canaveral () is a cape (geography), cape in Brevard County, Florida, in the United States, near the center of the state's Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. Officially Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated ...

, with a splashdown in the North Atlantic. The launch vehicle would have been a modified Redstone

Jupiter-C The Jupiter-C was an American research and development vehicle developed from the Jupiter-A. Jupiter-C was used for three Uncrewed vehicle, uncrewed sub-orbital spaceflights in 1956 and 1957 to test Re-entry vehicle, re-entry nosecones that were ...

. The astronaut would have been housed in a capsule modelled on the USAF's Manhigh gondola, modified for a water landing, with no provision for manual control. At the apogee of flight the astronaut would have experienced six minutes of weightlessness. The first manned flight would have been preceded by a series of flights involving

primates Primates is an order of mammals, which is further divided into the strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and lorisids; and the haplorhines, which include tarsiers and simians ( monkeys and apes). Primates arose 74–63 ...

. Project Adam was devised by the

Army Ballistic Missile Agency The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was formed to develop the U.S. Army's first large ballistic missile. The agency was established at Redstone Arsenal on 1 February 1956, and commanded by Major General John B. Medaris with Wernher v ...

, and was proposed to the

Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

on 11 July 1958. However although Secretary to the Army Wilber M. Brucker backed the project, largely as a psychological demonstration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald A. Quarles believed that it had "about the same technical value as the circus stunt of shooting a young lady from a cannon". The plan was not formally approved, although after the formation of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

on 29 July 1958 elements of the hardware were folded into

Project Mercury Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Un ...

References

{{Reflist Space research Human subject research in the United States Military projects of the United States