Article by payton millet

By Payton Millet

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he year is 1962. Dr. Ralph Pelligra is in residency at a hospital in New York state, when he and the rest of America witnessed something that they’d never seen before. On February 20th, the nation watched as John Glenn became the first American to exit the atmosphere and successfully

return to earth (Garber 11).

Pelligra, like many other idealists of the day, was immediately hit with a case of space fever. He packed up his life and put his wife and 1 week old son on a plane to California. When he got to the NASA Ames Research center here in Mountain View, he knocked on the door. In a

stroke of luck, they had a job for him to do. On that day, Ralph Pelligra became one of the first civilian doctors to find a position at Nasa.

From that day on, minus a brief return to New York to re-evaluate his choices, Dr. Pelligra became a staple at Ames. He served as he puts it, “to support during long term

Dr. Dr. Ralph Pelligra Ralph Pelligra space flights” (Pelligra) during the Golden age of NASA. Today his responsibilities lie in ensuring that experiments and studies with human subjects are conducted ethically and fairly to the humans involved. Ralph Pelligra has an amazing presence: his white hair and tan skin harken back to the years of service he offered to the program, and reminds us that there was fun to be had among the hard work. His frequent wisecracks and charming jokes summate in a demeanor of pleasant optimism. When you meet Dr. Pelligra, all you can think of is NASA: it’s rich and complex history, it’s tenaciousness and spirit, and the childish wonder of outer space. Through Dr. Pelligra I got a glimpse into the history of our space program

that was unlike anything I could have read or watched, because he was there, for all of it, and he has no plans of going anywhere.

Pelligra was born and raised in New York. In his educational process he pursued the standard course for becoming a working doctor.

He studied at the New York Medical College, and finished his formal training at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in NYC (Pelligra). However, as we discussed before his standard medical education did not lead him to a standard medical practice. From his lucky break to today, Pelligra has had a permanent medical research position at Ames.

In 1961, president John F. Kennedy had made a promise to the American people,

that the united states would put a man on the moon within a decade (Garber 25). NASA’s sole ambition from then on was to bring this promise to fruition. Pelligra’s work lay mostly in speculation: no one had ever sent a man that far into space before, and no one had ever brought one back. Pelligra and his peers worked restlessly to disprove every negative medical hypothesis about the effects of weightlessness, the psychological detriments of isolations, and of course the ever so difficult process of re-entry. There were even questions of if the human heart would pump for that long at such lower gravity (Pelligra).

These were the problems that Pelligra had to work out on a daily basis at ames. In recounting this grand gold-

en age, Dr. Pelligra says, “It was a fun time, and it still is.”

(Pelligra) After the Apollo Missions ran their course, there was yet another new frontier to explore at NASA. After much prepara tion in the 70’s, the space shuttle program kicked off in 1981 (Garber 73) with the mission to build the international space station.

Ralph found a new position to fill at NASA as the first response medical team at shuttle landings in the Mojave Desert. He wittily mentions that the landings were done here instead of in florida for the larger landing area. “At kennedy, they had a runway, and at the end of the runway was a swamp and Crocodiles” (Pelligra).

When the Astronauts would return to earth, Pelligra and his team were the first to examine them. He mentioned the recurring medical side effect of sychope: the dizziness that astronauts can have post space travel when the blood usually allocated to their brain rushes to their feet in the renewed normal gravity (Aerospace Medicine). To combat this effect, the astronauts wore G-suits, which “compressed the lower body and kept the blood from flowing down” (Pel-

ligra). Ralph and his team also developed a system of countermeasures, including vigorous exercise regimens, that the Astronauts completed in space to mitigate the negative side effects of space travel.

As the shuttle program was at its peak, Ralph and his team began preparation for another new area of research, only this time it was vastly different from anything they

to come.

From this point, Pelligra’s work became a lot more domestic. He started heading the institutional review board, determining which human experiments proposed to be conducted at Ames met ethical standards of NASA and the community (HHS). As Pelligra puts it, “Our main concern is to make sure that any research they’re doing justifies any risks that the subjects will be exposed to.”

(Pelligra) While many tests are carried out on astronauts, more often than not the test subjects come right out of the community. In these cases it is especially important to ensure informed consent it properly met. As Pelligra says, “When they come here to NASA as a volunteer, they’re all excited about being a part of NASA and they’re willing to sign anything. They say, ‘Ok, we know you guys are nice guys, you’ve got white hair.

We know you aren’t gonna hurt us’”(Pelligra) It’s Pelligra’s job to break through the starstruck nature of their test subjects and ensure that all of their science is done ethically. So far, he says, they have been very successful in ensuring that no one gets hurt.

“A Space Doc is Treating a Healthy Person in a Diseased Environment” had studied before. This field was the then inevitability of commercial space flight. At that time this future seemed more and more like a reality, and in preparation Ralph and his team did a number of experiments on average american volunteers, to test if they could withstand the physical strain of space travel. The tests were a great success, however, a tragic incident made the future of space travel seem a lot less bright. The challenger disaster in 1986 set NASA back a few steps, both in the public’s perception and their actual operations (Garber 102).

Commercial space travel would disappear from the realm of reality for decades

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s the nature of his occupation has always required, Pelligra is a speculative thinker. Through the latter half of our interviews our conversation evolved into an exploration of the future of Space travel, and NASA’s place, or lack thereof, in that future. After our discussion on the halting nature of the Challenger disaster, Ralph pointed out that commercial space flight was once again popping into the realm of reality. “Now as you’re well aware, they’re starting up again, this sort of space tourism, and we’ve done all the basic groundwork for that.”(Pelligra) He then clarified that the type of travel he was referring to was not a part of NASA. “NASA, is not in the transportation business, going back and forth to orbit or the station. It’s about exploration”(Pelligra) He mentions that he felt content with the ending of the shut-

tle program, believing that it had served its purpose, and that the transferring of technology and insight gained by the program to the private sector was the right way for things to go. “They can do it faster, cheaper, and they will, they’re competitive people”(Pelligra) Approaching it from an ethics perspective, Pelligra sees the raising of some difficult questions in the future. He recites a theoretical scenario where a millionaire insists on traveling to space in a private vessel, and then dies in a fatal accident. The question is where the liability for that man lies.

Those are the sort of questions Ralph faces going forward.

Pelligra has found a lot of time, at this stage in his life and career, to contemplate these rhetorical futures for space flight. When visiting him at his home, a houseboat in Sausalito, I was struck by how fit for thinking the place

was. The gentle ebb and flow of the tides rocked his abode into a steady rhythm, perfectly attuned to his process of thought. In responding to why he lived at such a strange place, he said he and his wife were, “attracted to the nonconformity, to the history here of free thinkers having developed it.”(Pelligra) I likened this community to that of NASA employees, and he agreed. He mentioned that those at NASA did not want to live in the standard 9-5 job cycle, they longed for something more.

He described himself as an armchair thinker on many occasions, but he also expresses appreciation for pragmaticism, especially in his line of work. In my opinion, Pelligra strikes the perfect balance between the two. At his office, he felt like a practical wisecracking scientist, but on his houseboat he was a philosopher of sorts.

Though there is a philosophical framework to space travel, “NASA has to be incredibly practical to actually send a human being into outer space. You can’t do that from an armchair.”(Pelligra) “At the end of the day you have a human life in a hostile environment, and you have ensure that you can work effectively, and come back home.”(Pelligra)

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he need to bring them home was reoccurring theme of Ralph’s justifications for the value of NASA. Many of my questions focussed on its relevancy as a government institution, given that some much of our prior conversations had concluded in his support of commercial space flight.

However, Ralph again offered a unique perspective. You see, he had seen NASA die before, more than once. He recalled an instance after one of the final Apollo missions, where NASA was called with complaints from angry viewers of the televised moon landing. They were complaining because the broadcasted had interrupted I Love Lucy.

(Pelligra) Pelligra cites that when NASA did not have a clear and prevalent goal, or good public relations, it waned from popularity. This occurred again, after challenger, when the country began to wonder if the risks were really worth the benefit of space travel. But to Pelligra, they always were. To him it didn’t matter if the institution was popular, just that it maintained its goal of furthering the basic human desire to explore our everwidening world. Even more

important was that NASA maintained its value for the lives of its astronauts, never cutting corners for the benefit of a tighter budget when a life was on the line. To Pelligra, it was for these two reasons that NASA’s continued relevancy was ensured: they weren’t going into the vacation business, and they

sum game. But Pelligra still believes in the goals of the space program, to explore, discover, and create as NASA puts it, “For the benefit of all” To watch a man with such a lengthy history still commit so adamantly to such noble and moral ambitions is truly inspirational. At the end of our first interview I asked Ralph when he planned to leave NASA. He told me, “You know the last thing I’m going to see of this place is going to be the ceiling, when they wheel me out on a stretcher. I have no plans of going anywhere till then”(Pelligra) All I hope is that the EMT’s carrying Pelligra’s stretcher do him the courtesy of returning the favor that he did for countless americans exploring space, and bring him home safe.

“NASA is Not in the Transportation Business... Itʼs about exploration” would always bring Americans home.

This was the sort of unbridled optimism in the Space program that makes Dr. Pelligra special. This was what kept the twinkle in his eyes throughout his years and years of service. To many of us in today’s cynical world of lowered expectations for government service, NASA seems like an expensive no

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