Dr. Buck Wilson, (Almost a) Rocket Man
By Todd Fuqua
Dr. Buck Wilson (BS 1960) may not have been to space, but he was instrumental in helping others get there. After graduating with a degree in engineering, Dr. Wilson went to work at the Brooks Aerospace Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. “In 1959, most people didn’t know what astronauts were,” Dr. Wilson recalled. “I was going to be an engineer at Brooks, but they didn’t need that. They made me a scientific aide. All those physiological tests we put the astronauts through, we had to go through first.” It was there that he met up with the group he called “the Magnificent Seven,” also known as the Mercury Seven. They were the first astronauts in the history of the U.S. space program.
“We had to work out and run every day,” said Dr. Wilson. It was a tough workout, even with his past athletic experience as a member of the ENMU football team. “We had a man named Dr. Kenneth Cooper, and his goal was to get people back into shape. We worked out his way.” Dr. Cooper’s “way” was aerobics, a term Dr. Cooper coined himself. He put Dr. Wilson and the other scientific aides through the same rigorous training the Mercury astronauts would later experience. Numerous electrodes and tubes were used on their bodies to measure stress levels, all of which were new cutting-edge designed instruments. “The researchers were collecting parotid fluid from a salivary gland inside the cheek to measure stress levels after the zero-g and g-force testing in jets and withstanding three gs in the centrifuge,” Dr. Wilson said. “We weren’t guinea pigs; we were ‘scientific aides.’”
Photo Courtesy of Buck Wilson
Before the astronauts could be tested and trained, the brand new experimental equipment had to be tested, and Dr. Wilson and his colleagues were the ones that served as test subjects.
Dr. Wilson stands outside of the anti-gravity ball used to simulate movement in space. He said this was tested only once, with no one in it, when it exploded. The space program instead used a similar setup at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio.
There were physicians present at all times because these tests pushed the limits of the test subjects’ endurance levels. “One test they did on me was put me upside down on a tilt table overnight, for about 12 hours,” Dr. Wilson said. “When they set me back upright, my heart stopped, and it took them 21 seconds to revive me. I was clinically dead. That’s why we had all those physicians around.” Thankfully, Dr. Wilson was a strong young man and was able to get back to work,
Dr. Wilson, left, receives the Greyhound Hero Award from ENMU Foundation President Stephen Doerr at the annual Foundation Barbeque in 2019.
preparing everything for the test pilots that were to become astronauts. He even met President John F. Kennedy, who came to San Antonio to dedicate the new School of Aerospace Medicine
Dr. Wilson strapped into the G-Force accelerator at the Brooks Aerospace Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Wilson and the other scientific aides were put through rigorous training to evaluate the equipment before the aspiring astronauts could be trained and tested.
Photo Courtesy of Buck Wilson
at Brooks Air Force Base. Dr. Wilson and the other aides received medals for their work. This special honor occurred on Nov. 21, 1963, the day before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Dr. Wilson continued his work at the Aerospace School until 1964, when he left the program to attend dental school at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In 1968, he returned to Portales to open his practice. “It is amazing someone from the high plains in eastern New Mexico could be part of this historic program,” Dr. Wilson said. “For me, it was the luck of the draw that I was a part of all of this.”
Green & Silver | December 2021
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