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Airman Donald Farrell
201222-F-YT892-0003.JPG Photo By: Jennifer Gonzalez

Joint Base San Antonio Randolph - Airman Donald Farrell sits inside a low pressure chamber dubbed “Terrella 1,” the world’s first space cabin simulator invented by USAF School of Aviation Medicine scientists at Randolph AFB in 1952. Farrell, a 23-year-old Lackland AFB accountant from the Bronx, New York, volunteered in February 1958 to be the first human to be sequestered inside a research chamber for a seven-day simulated trip to the moon conducted in Building 661 at Randolph AFB. The ‘moon trip’ was conducted over a 168-hour period from Feb. 9-16, 1958. So famous was Farrell’s ‘lunar journey,’ a U.S. response to the Soviet Union having started the space race with their launch of the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 on Oct 4, 1957, that TV producer Rod Serling created a “Twilight Zone TV episode based on the Farrell experiment which starred actor Earl Holloman.


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