However, chimpanzees and humans are both hominids, which means we’re much more closely related. Monkeys, chimps and humans are all primates. But instead of monkeys - or humans - the nascent National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided its inaugural class of astronauts would be chimps. was ready for its first real human spaceflight program, Project Mercury. (Though they also experienced a number of gruesome dog deaths.) NASA’s astronaut chimpsīy the early 1960s, the U.S. And by the time of Miss Baker’s and Able’s trip, the country had already safely launched and landed dozens of canines. Rather than monkeys, the Soviet Union preferred to crew their early spacecraft with stray dogs. While America was struggling to send monkeys into space, their adversaries were racking up animal success stories. Sadly, Able died just days after returning to Earth due to complications from a medical procedure. The pair were launched in 1959 on a Jupiter rocket, an intermediate-range ballistic missile designed to carry nuclear warheads, not monkeys. The honor of first primates to survive a return trip to space goes to a squirrel monkey named Miss Baker, and a rhesus macaque named Able. But his capsule failed to reach the boundary of space, leaving him out of the record books. In 1951, the Air Force finally managed to keep a monkey - this one named Albert VI - alive through both launch and landing. His spacecraft left a 10-foot-wide crater in the New Mexico desert. Unfortunately, on his journey home, Albert II died when the capsule’s parachute failed. Unlike his predecessor, Albert II succeeded in becoming the first monkey to survive a launch and reach space. The next year, a monkey named Albert II was sent on a similar mission. Poor Albert suffocated before he reached space. In 1948, a decade before the creation of NASA, the Air Force strapped a male rhesus monkey named Albert into a capsule on top of a souped-up, Nazi-designed V-2 rocket and launched it from White Sands, New Mexico. But those early missions didn’t go well - for either human or animal. Instead of chimps, smaller monkeys were their preferred choice. Air Force was the first to launch primates into space. It’s enjoyable enough that most people will be able to keep from rolling their eyes while watching the movie, but good luck remembering what was so enjoyable even a few hours later.The U.S. With animation and acting that won’t appeal to adults, but a humor level and cleverness that is above the heads of children, Space Chimps is a movie without a target audience. It’s great that the writers could fall back on that tried-and-true punchline. In the theater I saw the movie in, the story was captivating enough to keep the kids’ attention, but I heard barely any laughter until the story descended into bathroom humor. The problem is that the allusions, as well as most of the movie’s jokes and chimp-related puns, are above the heads of the children who will make up the viewing audience. There’s several easily recognizable science-fiction references, although I begrudge the writers for not going with something so easy - a Planet of the Apes nod. That leaves the story, which is actually a little bit of fun. Brought in from his circus life, the clownish Ham III has to work with the astronaut-trained Titan and Luna to get to space, find the probe, and eventually save the alien planet from Earth’s technology gone awry. The senator wants more of a PR blitz for the mission, so NASA tracks down the grandson of Ham I, the first chimp to go into space. The scientists decide to launch a shuttle to go after the probe, but since they are unaware of what effects the wormhole might have on human life, they decide to send a team of chimps. Meanwhile, back on Earth, NASA is being grilled by an ambitious senator about the missing probe. Through a series of accidents, Zartog manages to gain control of the probe’s technology and uses it to dominate over the other aliens. Zartog, the planet’s version of the Grinch, is busy yelling at the citizens he hates when the probe crashes in to his house. Seuss may have dreamed up and then discarded. The movie opens with a NASA probe sent out to detect alien life accidentally disappearing through a wormhole and landing on a alien planet styled after something Dr.
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