I was curious about the scene where Scott Glenn goes into a room and some doctor sticks a needle in his hand. All of a sudden he gets zapped by what appears to be a lot of electrical current. He asks what its for and the doctor says “there’s no simple way to explain that” or something to that effect. I’m wondering exactly why would you need to test someone like that? Ability to function whilst being electrocuted perhaps?
The movie has the scene almost the same as the book describes, but there is no explanation of what the test was for in the book either. The test was done to Conrad.
It’s a hilarious read, the whole Lovelace Clinic episode.
I thought it had something to do with testing reflexes. Basically, the electric current was causing the muscles in his hand to rapidly contract and relax. Maybe they were able to measure how fast his muscles were able to respond? It could give them some idea about the man’s ability to quickly perform repetitious motor movements.
I recall reading that the astronauts often felt that some of the tests they were subjected to didn’t seem to have much to do with the requirements of the job. They felt the NASA doctors treated them somewhat like lab rats, poking and prodding them in different ways just to see what happens. To be fair, the doctors didn’t know what the effects of space flight would be on a person, so they wanted to keep track of a wide variety of variables and amass as much information as possible about the astronauts both before and after they went up.
Sounds like the test for nerve damage they give you when you have carpal tunnel syndrome – shock you, and see how long it takes for your hand to move. So it’s probably a reflex test of some sort.
Expanding on Tangent’s statement, the various doctors and scientists had a near-unlimited budget and full license to run any test they could think of. And they did.
Speaking of The Right Stuff, what was the deal with the test that made the astronauts have to piss really bad? And so there was a comical scene with them running to the bathroom which for some reason was upstairs?
I think they were given a barium enema, which didn’t cause them to tinkle; they had to go poopoo.
The bathroom-being-upstairs bit (or down a long hall; can’t remember which) was yet another subtle dig at the doctors doing the tests. They didn’t consider the human element to their equations; they just wanted to know the results of the tests. So they did a test which resulted in an urgent need to defecate, but they did it far, far away from a bathroom.
It’s a great book, BTW – significantly better than the movie, IMO.
–Cliffy
It sounds like a myograph, which measures muscle contractility. If I remember correctly, Wolfe was especially vivid in describing the archane medicals tests that served seemingly no purpose whatsovever. At that time, no one knew exactly what the physiogical consequences of space would be – and it’s still pretty fuzzy.