By George P. Edmonston Jr.

As we enter the new year, OSU has two NASA astronauts actively involved in space exploration, which may be tops among all major universities in the country.

Donald Pettit, a 1977 chemical engineering graduate who grew up near Silverton (Ore.), is currently circling the globe as a crew member aboard space shuttle Endeavor, which left the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 30. Selected by NASA for the prestigious assignment in 1995, Pettit and company are in the second month of a four-month assignment to work aboard International Space Station Alpha.

A news release issued this week (Jan. 8) by The Oregonian reported Pettit will substitute for Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin on a Jan. 15 spacewalk outside Alpha to perform a variety of maintenance tasks. Budarin was removed from the job by U.S. flight surgeons late in December for undisclosed medical reasons.

Scheduled to depart in May, Oregon Stater and electrical engineer William Oefelein, '88, will pilot space shuttle Atlantis to Alpha as part of a crew changeout and to complete other technical assignments, a case, you might say, of one Beaver replacing another in space.

In 2000, Oefelein was inducted as a member of the OSU College of Engineering's Council of Early Outstanding Engineers.

Pettit and Oefelein's remarkable achievements recall an incident on campus back in 1961 that has now become all but a distant memory for Oregon Staters who were students at the time.

In February of that year, and a full 12 months before U.S. astronaut John Glenn's historic first manned orbit of the globe (Feb. 20, 1962), the junior class of OSU's Air Force ROTC program decided to build a full-scale model of a Mercury space capsule and to select one of their own to "man" the device as part of activities held during Dad's Weekend.

The honor of who would serve as OSU's "astronaut" came down to three sophomore finalists. The only catch was that whoever won the competition had to agree to remain inside the capsule a full 48 hours, or from 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24, until 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26.

The winner turned out to be Donald L. Cram from Merced, Calif.

Donald Cram inside the capsule. Photo from the April '61 Oregon Stater.

"I felt like a monkey in a cage," Cram told reporter Dick Colby of OSU's alumni magazine, The Oregon Stater, after the ordeal was over. "But I could have gone another 24 hours in there."

During his two-day stay inside the 6- by 10-foot structure, Cram, who graduated in 1963 with a degree in science, was subjected to a battery of psychological tests to chart his reactions to closed confinement. Testing equipment loaned to the cadets by the department of psychology included a device for testing galvanic skin response, respiratory charting devices, and reaction time and manual dexterity equipment. Tests were conducted every two hours and Cram's blood pressure was checked at four-hour intervals.

A small window built into the side of the vessel allowed Dad's Weekend visitors to see the young "astronaut" in action and to wave hello. He admitted afterward that having people stare at him gradually got on his nerves but that, otherwise, he felt no discomfort.

Materials for the capsule's construction were donated by merchants in Corvallis and the Willamette Valley. Monetary donations came from the Corvallis business community and the cadet juniors, and food supplies, contained entirely within the capsule during the period, were donated by the department of food and dairy technology at OSU. Cram served himself through the use of tube-like containers (similar to that of a toothpaste tube) adapted for the test by Dr. E.M. Litwiller, professor of food technology.

Two views of the mock space capsule. Photos from the April '61 Oregon Stater

Class cadets were given the project by AFROTC detachment officers as an exercise in project planning and management.

Alumni records indicate that as of 1999, Cram was residing in Monument, Colo. For many years he worked for Northwest Orient Airlines, assigned to SEATAC International Airport near Seattle.

-- By George Edmonston Jr. is editor of Eclips and the Oregon Stater.