title: South Pacific (musical)

text: A U.S. national tour based on the 2008 revival began in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Theatre on September 18, 2009. Sher directed, and the cast starred Rod Gilfry (Emile) and Carmen Cusack (Nellie). A Sher production opened at the Barbican Theatre in London on August 15, 2011, and closed on October 1, 2011, with the same creative team from the Broadway revival. Szot and Welsh National Opera singer Jason Howard alternated in the role of Emile, with Samantha Womack as Nellie, Ables Sayre as Bloody Mary and Alex Ferns as Billis. The production received mostly positive reviews. A U.K tour followed, with Womack, Ables Sayre and Ferns. The Sher production was also produced by Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House from August to September 2012 and then at Princess Theatre, Melbourne through October 2012. It starred Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Emile, Lisa McCune as Nellie, Kate Ceberano as Bloody Mary and Eddie Perfect as Billis. It then played in Brisbane for the 2012 holiday season, with Christine Anu as Bloody Mary, and resumed touring in Australia in September 2013.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: A Chichester Festival Theatre revival from July to September 2021 was directed by Daniel Evans and starred Gina Beck and Alex Young sharing the role of Nellie, Julian Ovenden as Emile and Joanna Ampil as Bloody Mary. Beck left the cast in August 2021 on maternity leave. The production began a UK and Ireland tour at the Manchester Opera House in July 2022 and Sadler's Wells Theatre in July and August 2022 with the same cast (minus Young) and received positive reviews. The tour is set to continue until at least November 2022. A U.S. national tour opened on February 7, 2022, at the RP Funding Center theater in Lakeland, Florida, starring Jared Bybee as Emile and Maris McCulley as Nellie. It closed on May 22, 2022 in New Bedford, Massachusetts.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Reviewers gave the original production uniformly glowing reviews; one critic called it "South Terrific". The "New York Herald Tribune" wrote:


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The "New York Daily Mirror" critic wrote, "Programmed as a musical play, "South Pacific" is just that. It boasts no ballets and no hot hoofing. It has no chorus in the conventional sense. Every one in it plays a part. It is likely to establish a new trend in musicals." The review continued: "Every number is so outstanding that it is difficult to decide which will be the most popular." The review in "New York World-Telegram" found the show to be "the ultimate modern blending of music and popular theatre to date, with the finest kind of balance between story and song, and hilarity and heartbreak." Brooks Atkinson of "The New York Times" especially praised Pinza's performance: "Mr. Pinza's bass voice is the most beautiful that has been heard on a Broadway stage for an eon or two. He sings ... with infinite delicacy of feeling and loveliness of tone." He declared that "Some Enchanted Evening", sung by Pinza, "ought to become reasonably immortal." Richard Watts, Jr. of the "New York Post" focused on Mary Martin's performance, writing, "nothing I have ever seen her do prepared me for the loveliness, humor, gift for joyous characterization, and sheer lovableness of her portrayal of Nellie Forbush ... who is so shocked to find her early racial prejudices cropping up. Hers is a completely irresistible performance."


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: When "South Pacific" opened in London in November 1951, the reviews were mixed. London's "Daily Express" praised the music but disliked other elements of that show, writing, "We got a 42nd Street "Madame Butterfly", the weakest of all the Hammerstein-Rodgers musicals. The "Daily Mail" suggested, "The play moved so slowly between its songs that it seemed more like "South Soporific"." "The Times" applauded the songs but indicated that "before the end the singing and the dancing have dwindled to almost nothing, while the rather sad little tale is slowly and conventionally wound up." "The Manchester Guardian", however, noted the anticipation in advance of the opening and concluded that "there was no disappointment ... the show bounces the audience and well deserves the cheers." Drama critic Kenneth Tynan of "The Spectator" wrote that "South Pacific" was "the first musical romance which was seriously involved in an adult subject ... I have nothing to do but thank Logan, Rodgers and Hammerstein and climb up from my knees, a little cramped from the effort of typing in such an unusual position."


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: A 2006 review asserted: "Many are the knowledgeable and discriminating people for whom Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific", brilliantly co-written and staged by Joshua Logan, was the greatest musical of all." In 1987, John Rockwell of "The New York Times" reviewed the City Opera production, commenting that while "South Pacific" had been innovative for 1949, "Sondheim has long since transcended its formal innovations, and the constant reprises of the big tunes sound mechanical. In 1949, "South Pacific" epitomized the concerns of the day – America's responsibilities in the world and the dangers of racism. ... At its 1967 State Theater revival, the show struck many as dated. It still seems that way, with "M*A*S*H" having contemporized this same setting". A 2008 "Huffington Post" review criticized the play as having an Orientalist and Western-centric storyline in which stereotypical natives take on "exotic background roles" in relation to Americans, and it characterized the relationship between Cable and Liat as underage prostitution, charging that she "speaks not a word in the whole musical, only smiles and takes the Yankee to bed." "South Pacific" is the only major American musical set in World War II, but former Marine Robert Leckie wrote his memoir of that conflict, "Helmet for My Pillow", after he walked out of a performance: "I have to tell the story of how it really was. I have to let people know the war wasn't a musical."


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: "South Pacific" opened on Broadway with $400,000 in advance sales. People were so eager to obtain tickets that the press wrote about the lengths people had gone to in getting them. Because "house seats" were being sold by scalpers for $200 or more, the attorney general's office threatened to close the show. The parties who provided the scalpers with the tickets were never identified, and the show ran without interference. The production had a $50,600 weekly gross, and ran for 1,925 performances. The national tour began in 1950 and grossed $3,000,000 in the first year, making $1,500,000 in profit. The original cast album, priced at $4.85, sold more than a million copies.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The original production of "South Pacific" won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Male Performer (Pinza), Best Female Performer (Martin), Best Supporting Male Performer (McCormick), Best Supporting Female Performer (Hall), Best Director (Logan), Best Book and Best Score. As of 2016, it is the only show to win Tonys in all four acting categories. In 1950, the musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the second musical to do so after "Of Thee I Sing", which won in 1932. Rodgers became the first composer of musical comedy to win the Pulitzer, as composer George Gershwin had not been recognized for "Of Thee I Sing". The Pulitzer Prize was initially given only to Rodgers and Hammerstein; Logan was later recognized in an amended announcement, much to his annoyance.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The 2001 London revival garnered a Laurence Olivier Award for Philip Quast (Emile). The 2008 revival won seven Tony Awards, including Best Revival (Sher and Szot also won, and the show won in all four design categories), and five Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Musical Revival. The late Robert Russell Bennett was also honored that season for "his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific"." As of 2016, this was the musical revival with the most Tony Awards. The 2011 London production received three Olivier Award nominations, including Best Musical Revival, but won none.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Part of the reason why "South Pacific" is considered a classic is its confrontation of racism. According to professor Philip Beidler, "Rodgers and Hammerstein's attempt to use the Broadway theater to make a courageous statement against racial bigotry in general and institutional racism in the postwar United States in particular" forms part of "South Pacific"'s legend. Although "Tales of the South Pacific" treats the question of racism, it does not give it the central place that it takes in the musical. Andrea Most, writing on the "politics of race" in "South Pacific", suggests that in the late 1940s, American liberals, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, turned to the fight for racial equality as a practical means of advancing their progressive views without risking being deemed communists. Trevor Nunn, director of the 2001 West End production, notes the importance of the fact that Nellie, a southerner, ends the play about to be the mother in an interracial family: "It's being performed in America in 1949. That's the resonance."


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: From the early drafts, Hammerstein and Logan made the issue of racial prejudice central to the story. Hammerstein repeatedly rewrote the Act II backstage scene where Emile, Nellie and Cable confront the question of the Americans' racism. As critic Robert Butler pointed out in his educational companion to the 2001 London production, "if one young person has a prejudice, it might be a character flaw; if two young people share a prejudice, it tells us something about the society in which they grew up". In one draft, Emile advises that the Americans are no better than the Axis Powers, in their prejudice, and suggests they go home to sing songs about how all are created free and equal. Lovensheimer states that a postwar American audience would have found such onstage sentiments to be offensive. In the staged version, Emile's expressions are limited to two lines arguing that prejudice is not inborn.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: At the heart of this scene is Cable's song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught", in which Cable realizes the sources of his own racism. Its frank lyrics made it perhaps the most controversial element of the show. Michener recalled in his memoirs that a delegation of New Englanders had approached him after a New Haven tryout and urged him to recommend the song's removal to Rodgers and Hammerstein. When Michener told Hammerstein, he laughed and replied, "That's what the show is about!" Boston drama critic Elliot Norton, after seeing the show in tryouts, strongly recommended its removal, or at least that Cable sing it less "briskly", as there was much bigotry in Boston; Logan replied that this was all the more reason for leaving it unaltered. Several New York reviewers expressed discomfort with the song; Wolcott Gibbs wrote of "something called 'You've Got to Be Taught', a poem in praise of tolerance that somehow I found a little embarrassing" while John Mason Brown opined that he was "somewhat distressed by the dragged-in didacticism of such a plea for tolerance as 'You've Got to Be Taught'". After the Broadway opening, Hammerstein received a large number of letters concerning "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". Judging by the letters that remain among his papers in the Library of Congress, the reaction was mixed. One correspondent wrote "What can I say to a man who writes, 'You've got to be taught to hate and fear?' ... Now that I know you, I feel that my informants didn't praise you enough." Nevertheless, another wrote, "I feel the inclusion of the song particularly in the album and to some extent in the show itself is not helpful to the cause of brotherhood, your intent to the contrary notwithstanding".


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: When the tour of the show reached a racially segregated theatre in Wilmington, Delaware, Rodgers and Hammerstein threatened to cancel the performances there unless seating was integrated, which it was. In 1953, with the tour in Atlanta, there was controversy over "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". Two Georgia state legislators, Senator John D. Shepard and Representative David C. Jones, objected to the song, stating that though "South Pacific" was a fine piece of entertainment, that song "contained an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow", and explained, "Intermarriage produces half-breeds. And half-breeds are not conducive to the higher type of society. ... In the South, we have pure blood lines and we intend to keep it that way." They stated that they planned to introduce legislation to outlaw such communist-inspired works. The Northern press had a field day; Hammerstein, when asked for comment, responded that he did not think the legislators were representing their constituents very well, and that he was surprised at the suggestion that anything kind and decent must necessarily originate in Moscow. In part because of the song, touring companies of "South Pacific" had difficulty getting bookings in the Deep South.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: In the final scene of Act I, Nellie rejects Emile because of his part-Polynesian children. In so doing, Nellie fails to live up to the American ideal that "all men are created equal", which Emile had earlier affirmed. This scene was also toned down by Hammerstein; in early drafts, Nellie, initially unable to force out a word to describe Emile's first wife, after he supplies the word "Polynesian", responds with "colored". This pronouncement, which makes Nellie less sympathetic as a character, was restored for the 2008 Lincoln Center production. As Frank Rich of "The New York Times" commented, "it's upsetting because Nellie isn't some cracker stereotype – she's lovable ... But how can we love a racist?" Most argues that even Emile is tainted by racism, as his lifestyle is dependent on the maintenance of a system whereby he benefits from underpaid native labor – Bloody Mary is able to attract workers to make grass skirts for sale to GIs because, as she puts it, "French planters stingy bastards!"


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Nellie Forbush, in her journey from Little Rock, Arkansas, to serving as a Navy nurse and on to the domesticity of the final scene of "South Pacific", parallels the experience of many American women of the period. They entered the workforce during the war, only to find afterwards a societal expectation that they give up their jobs to men, with their best route to financial security being marriage and becoming a housewife. One means of securing audience acceptance of Nellie's choices was the sanitization of her sexual past from her counterpart in the Michener work – that character had a 4-F boyfriend back in Arkansas and a liaison with Bill Harbison while on the island.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The male characters in "South Pacific" are intended to appear conventionally masculine. In the aftermath of World War II, the masculinity of the American soldier was beyond public question. Cable's virility with Liat is made evident to the audience. Although Billis operates a laundry – Nellie particularly praises his pleats – and appears in a grass skirt in the "Thanksgiving Follies", these acts are consistent with his desire for money and are clearly intended to be comic. His interest in the young women on Bali H'ai establishes his masculinity. Lovensheimer writes that Billis is more defined by class than by sexuality, evidenced by the Seabee's assumption, on learning that Cable went to college in New Jersey, that it was Rutgers (the state's flagship public university), rather than Ivy League Princeton, and by his delight on learning that the rescue operation for him had cost $600,000 when his uncle had told him he would never be worth a dime.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Meryle Secrest, in her biography of Rodgers, theorizes that "South Pacific" marks a transition for the pair "between heroes and heroines who are more or less evenly matched in age and stories about powerful older men and the younger women who are attracted to them". Lovensheimer points out that this pattern only holds for two of their five subsequent musicals, "The King and I" and "The Sound of Music", and in the former, the love between Anna and the King is not expressed in words. He believes a different transition took place: that their plots, beginning with "South Pacific", involve a woman needing to enter and accept her love interest's world to be successful and accepted herself. He notes that both "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel" involve a man entering his wife's world, Curly in "Oklahoma!" about to become a farmer with expectations of success, whereas Billy Bigelow in "Carousel" fails to find work after leaving his place as a barker. Lovensheimer deems "Allegro" to be a transition, where the attempts of the lead female character to alter her husband Joe's world to suit her ambition lead to the breakup of their marriage. He argues that the nurse Emily, who goes with Joe in his return to the small town where he was happy, is a forerunner of Nellie, uprooting her life in Chicago for Joe.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Secrest notes that much is overlooked in the rush to have love conquer all in "South Pacific", "questions of the long-term survival of a marriage between a sophisticate who read Proust at bedtime and a girl who liked Dinah Shore and did not read anything were raised by Nellie Forbush only to be brushed aside. As for the interracial complexities of raising two Polynesian children, all such issues were subsumed in the general euphoria of true love." Lovensheimer too wonders how Nellie will fare as the second Madame de Becque, "little Nellie Forbush from Arkansas ends up in a tropical paradise, far from her previous world, with a husband, a servant, and two children who speak a language she does not understand".


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: A mammoth hit, "South Pacific" sparked huge media and public attention. "South Pacific" was one of the first shows for which a variety of souvenirs were available: fans could buy "South Pacific" neckties, or for women, lipstick and scarves. Fake ticket stubs could be purchased for use as status symbols. There were "South Pacific" music boxes, dolls, fashion accessories, and even hairbrushes for use after washing men from hair. Martin's on-stage shower prompted an immediate fashion craze for short hair that could be managed through once-a-day washing at home, rather than in a beauty salon, and for the products which would allow for such care. The songs of "South Pacific" could be heard on the radio, and they were popular among dance bands and in piano lounges. Mordden comments that "South Pacific" contained nothing but hit songs; Rodgers and Hammerstein's other successful works always included at least one song which did not become popular.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The cast album, recorded ten days after the show's opening, was an immediate hit. Released by Columbia Records, it spent 69 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard and a total of 400 weeks on the charts, becoming the best-selling record of the 1940s. It was one of the early LP records, with a turntable speed of 33 rpm, and helped to popularize that technology – previously, show albums and operas had been issued on sets of 78 rpm records, with high prices and much less music on a single disc. In the years to come, the LP would become the medium of choice for the "longhair" music niche of show, opera and classical performances.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: An indirect effect of the success of the show was the career of James Michener. His one percent of the show as author of the source material, plus the income from a share which the duo allowed him to buy on credit, made him financially independent and allowed him to quit his job as an editor at Macmillan and to become a full-time writer. Over the next five decades, his lengthy, detailed novels centering on different places would dominate the bestseller lists.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The role of Nellie Forbush was the first time with Hammerstein that Rodgers made the leading female role a belter, rather than a lyric soprano like Laurey in "Oklahoma!" and Julie in "Carousel". According to Mordden, "Nellie was something new in R&H, carrying a goodly share of the score on a 'Broadway' voice".


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Nellie does not sing together with Emile, because Rodgers promised Martin that she would not have to compete vocally with Pinza, but the composer sought to unite them in the underlying music. A tetrachord, heard before we see either lead, is played during the instrumental introduction to "Dites-Moi", the show's first song. Considered as pitch classes, that is, as pitches without characterization by octave or register, the motif is C-B-A-G. It will be heard repeatedly in Nellie's music, or in the music (such as "Twin Soliloquies") that she shares with Emile, and even in the bridge of "Some Enchanted Evening". Lovensheimer argues that this symbolizes what Nellie is trying to say with her Act II line "We're the same sort of people fundamentally – you and me".


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Originally, "Twin Soliloquies" came to an end shortly after the vocal part finishes. Logan found this unsatisfying and worked with Trude Rittmann to find a better ending to the song. This piece of music, dubbed "Unspoken Thoughts", continues the music as Nellie and Emile sip brandy together, and is called by Lovensheimer "the one truly operatic moment of the score". "This Nearly Was Mine" is a big bass solo for Emile in waltz time, deemed by Rodgers biographer William G. Hyland as "one of his finest efforts". Only five notes are used in the first four bars, a phrase which is then repeated with a slight variation in the following four bars. The song ends an octave higher than where it began, making it perfect for Pinza's voice.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Two songs, "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" and "Honey Bun" are intended to imitate American popular songs of the 1940s. In the former, the triple recitation of the song title at intervals suggests a big band arrangement of the wartime era, while in the bridge, the final eight bars (repeating the lyrics from the bridge's first eight bars) gives a suggestion of swing. The sections beginning "If the man don't understand you" and "If you laugh at different comics" have a blues style. Lovensheimer deems the song "Nellie's spontaneous and improvisatory expression of her feelings through the vocabulary of popular song". Mordden suggests that "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" with its "take no prisoners bounce", might well be the center of the score, with the typical American girl defending her love by spouting clichés, many of which, such as "corny as Kansas in August" Hammerstein made up, and "sure enough, over the years they have become clichés".


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Columbia Records recorded the overture and most of the songs from the original production in 1949, using members of the cast including Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin. Drawing from the original lacquer disc masters, Columbia released the album both on 78-rpm discs and the new LP record format in 1949. According to critic John Kenrick, the original cast recording "is the rare stuff that lasting legends are made of", an essential classic. The album was number one from mid-1949 and throughout most of 1950 for a record 63 weeks, selling more than one million copies. A CD was released by Sony in 1988 from the previously unused magnetic tape recording from the same 1949 sessions in New York City. The CD includes the bonus tracks "Loneliness of Evening" (recorded in 1949 by Mary Martin), "My Girl Back Home" (Martin), "Bali Ha'i" (Pinza) and Symphonic Scenario for Concert Orchestra (original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett). The original cast album was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress on March 21, 2013, for long-term preservation. The film soundtrack was released on the RCA Victor label in March 1958. Kenrick calls the recording "mixed up" and does not recommend it.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: Masterworks Broadway released a recording of the 1967 Lincoln Center production starring Florence Henderson as Nellie, Giorgio Tozzi as Emile, Justin McDonough as Cable and Irene Byatt as Bloody Mary. The recording includes a version of "Bali Ha'i", sung in French by Eleanor Calbes, the Liat. According to Kenrick, "Every track of this 1967 Lincoln Center cast recording is such a winner that you can't help wondering why it took so long for this winner to make its way to CD." Kenrick notes that the album is a more complete alternative to the original cast album.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: In 1986 José Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa made a studio recording of "South Pacific", the sessions of which were filmed as a documentary, similar in style to Leonard Bernstein's successful "West Side Story" documentary a year earlier that featured the same stars. Emile's music was transposed to fit Carreras's tenor voice. The recording also featured Sarah Vaughan as Bloody Mary and Mandy Patinkin as Cable. Stephen Holden reviewed the album in "The New York Times", "the star of this "South Pacific" isn't any individual, but rather the score itself". Kenrick calls the recording badly miscast "pretentious trash". Kenrick gives mixed praise to the 1988 London revival cast album.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The 2001 Royal National Theatre's revival cast album was recorded in 2002 on First Night Records with Philip Quast as Emile, Lauren Kennedy as Nellie, Edward Baker-Duly as Cable, Sheila Francisco as Bloody Mary and Nick Holder as Billis. The album includes the cut song, "Now Is the Time". While Kenrick allows that most critics like the recording, he finds it a waste of money. The 2005 Carnegie Hall concert version was released on April 18, 2006, by Decca Broadway with Reba McEntire as Nellie, Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile, Lillias White as Bloody Mary, Jason Danieley as Cable and Alec Baldwin as Billis. Kenrick describes this recording as "one of the most ravishing that this glorious Rodgers & Hammerstein classic has ever received" and "a show tune lover's dream come true." The 2008 Broadway revival cast album was released on May 27, 2008, by Masterworks Broadway. Kenrick finds it "very satisfying".


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: "South Pacific" was made into a film of the same name in 1958, and it topped the box office that year. Joshua Logan directed the film, which starred Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, Ray Walston, Juanita Hall and France Nuyen; all of their singing voices except Gaynor's and Walston's were dubbed. Thurl Ravenscroft, later television's Tony the Tiger, sang the basso profundo notes in "There Is Nothing Like a Dame". The film opened with Cable's flight to the island in a PBY, followed by the Seabees' beach scene, and added Billis' rescue and scenes from the mission to spy on the Japanese. The film won the Academy Award for Best Sound. It was also nominated for the Oscar for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture (Alfred Newman and Ken Darby), and the 65 mm Todd-AO cinematography by Leon Shamroy was also nominated. The film was widely criticized for its use of color to indicate mood, with actors changing color as they began to sing. The film includes the song "My Girl Back Home", sung by Cable, which was cut from the stage musical. The movie was the third-highest-grossing film in the U.S. of the 1950s; its UK revenues were the highest ever, a record it kept until "Goldfinger" in 1963. Although reviewers have criticized the film – "Time" magazine stated that it was "almost impossible to make a bad movie out of it – but the moviemakers appear to have tried" – it has added success on television, videotape and DVD to its box office laurels.


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: A made-for-television film, directed by Richard Pearce, was produced and televised in 2001, starring Glenn Close as Nellie, Harry Connick, Jr. as Cable and Rade Sherbedgia as Emile. This version changed the order of the musical's songs (the film opens with "There Is Nothing Like a Dame") and omits "Happy Talk". "My Girl Back Home" was filmed but not included in the broadcast due to time constraints; it was restored for the DVD, issued in 2001. The last half-hour of the film features scenes of war, including shots of segregated troops. Lovensheimer states that the film returned to the Michener original in one respect: "Harry Connick Jr.'s Joe Cable is a fascinating combination of sensitive leading man and believable Leatherneck".


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: The movie and Close were praised by "The New York Times": "Ms. Close, lean and more mature, hints that a touch of desperation lies in Nellie's cockeyed optimism." The review also commented that the movie "is beautifully produced, better than the stagy 1958 film" and praised the singing. Kenrick, however, dislikes the adaptation: "You certainly won't ever want to put this disaster in your player, unless you want to hear the sound of Rodgers and Hammerstein whirling in their graves. Glenn Close is up to the material, but her supporting cast is uniformly disastrous. A pointless and offensive waste of money, time and talent."


title: South Pacific (musical)

text: A 2005 concert version of the musical, edited down to two hours, but including all of the songs and the full musical score, was presented at Carnegie Hall. It starred Reba McEntire as Nellie, Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile, Alec Baldwin as Billis and Lillias White as Bloody Mary. The production used Robert Russell Bennett's original orchestrations and the Orchestra of St. Luke's directed by Paul Gemignani. It was taped and telecast by PBS in 2006 and released the same year on DVD. "The New York Times" critic Ben Brantley wrote, "Open-voiced and open-faced, Reba McEntire was born to play Nellie"; the production was received "in a state of nearly unconditional rapture. It was one of those nights when cynicism didn't stand a chance." Kenrick especially likes Mitchell's "This Nearly Was Mine", and praises the concert generally: "this excellent performance helped restore the reputation of this classic".


title: Project Mercury

text: Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights (some using animals), and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $ (adjusted for inflation). The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.


title: Project Mercury

text: The Space Race began with the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. This came as a shock to the American public, and led to the creation of NASA to expedite existing US space exploration efforts, and place most of them under civilian control. After the successful launch of the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958, crewed spaceflight became the next goal. The Soviet Union put the first human, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, into a single orbit aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Shortly after this, on May 5, the US launched its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight. Soviet Gherman Titov followed with a day-long orbital flight in August 1961. The US reached its orbital goal on February 20, 1962, when John Glenn made three orbits around the Earth. When Mercury ended in May 1963, both nations had sent six people into space, but the Soviets led the US in total time spent in space.


title: Project Mercury

text: The Mercury space capsule was produced by McDonnell Aircraft, and carried supplies of water, food and oxygen for about one day in a pressurized cabin. Mercury flights were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, on launch vehicles modified from the Redstone and Atlas D missiles. The capsule was fitted with a launch escape rocket to carry it safely away from the launch vehicle in case of a failure. The flight was designed to be controlled from the ground via the Manned Space Flight Network, a system of tracking and communications stations; back-up controls were outfitted on board. Small retrorockets were used to bring the spacecraft out of its orbit, after which an ablative heat shield protected it from the heat of atmospheric reentry. Finally, a parachute slowed the craft for a water landing. Both astronaut and capsule were recovered by helicopters deployed from a US Navy ship.


title: Project Mercury

text: The Mercury project gained popularity, and its missions were followed by millions on radio and TV around the world. Its success laid the groundwork for Project Gemini, which carried two astronauts in each capsule and perfected space docking maneuvers essential for crewed lunar landings in the subsequent Apollo program announced a few weeks after the first crewed Mercury flight.


title: Project Mercury

text: Project Mercury was officially approved on October 7, 1958, and publicly announced on December 17. Originally called Project Astronaut, President Dwight Eisenhower felt that gave too much attention to the pilot. Instead, the name "Mercury" was chosen from classical mythology, which had already lent names to rockets like the Greek "Atlas" and Roman "Jupiter" for the SM-65 and PGM-19 missiles. It absorbed military projects with the same aim, such as the Air Force Man in Space Soonest.


title: Project Mercury

text: Following the end of World War II, a nuclear arms race evolved between the US and the Soviet Union (USSR). Since the USSR did not have bases in the western hemisphere from which to deploy bomber planes, Joseph Stalin decided to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, which drove a missile race. The rocket technology in turn enabled both sides to develop Earth-orbiting satellites for communications, and gathering weather data and intelligence. Americans were shocked when the Soviet Union placed the first satellite into orbit in October 1957, leading to a growing fear that the US was falling into a "missile gap". A month later, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2, carrying a dog into orbit. Though the animal was not recovered alive, it was obvious their goal was human spaceflight. Unable to disclose details of military space projects, President Eisenhower ordered the creation of a civilian space agency in charge of civilian and scientific space exploration. Based on the federal research agency National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), it was named the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It achieved its first goal, an American satellite in space, in 1958. The next goal was to put a man there.


title: Project Mercury

text: The limit of space (also known as the Kármán line) was defined at the time as a minimum altitude of , and the only way to reach it was by using rocket-powered boosters. This created risks for the pilot, including explosion, high g-forces and vibrations during lift off through a dense atmosphere, and temperatures of more than from air compression during reentry.


title: Project Mercury

text: In space, pilots would require pressurized chambers or space suits to supply fresh air. While there, they would experience weightlessness, which could potentially cause disorientation. Further potential risks included radiation and micrometeoroid strikes, both of which would normally be absorbed in the atmosphere. All seemed possible to overcome: experience from satellites suggested micrometeoroid risk was negligible, and experiments in the early 1950s with simulated weightlessness, high g-forces on humans, and sending animals to the limit of space, all suggested potential problems could be overcome by known technologies. Finally, reentry was studied using the nuclear warheads of ballistic missiles, which demonstrated a blunt, forward-facing heat shield could solve the problem of heating.


title: Project Mercury

text: T. Keith Glennan had been appointed the first Administrator of NASA, with Hugh L. Dryden (last Director of NACA) as his Deputy, at the creation of the agency on October 1, 1958. Glennan would report to the president through the National Aeronautics and Space Council. The group responsible for Project Mercury was NASA's Space Task Group, and the goals of the program were to orbit a crewed spacecraft around Earth, investigate the pilot's ability to function in space, and to recover both pilot and spacecraft safely. Existing technology and off-the-shelf equipment would be used wherever practical, the simplest and most reliable approach to system design would be followed, and an existing launch vehicle would be employed, together with a progressive test program. Spacecraft requirements included: a launch escape system to separate the spacecraft and its occupant from the launch vehicle in case of impending failure; attitude control for orientation of the spacecraft in orbit; a retrorocket system to bring the spacecraft out of orbit; drag braking blunt body for atmospheric reentry; and landing on water. To communicate with the spacecraft during an orbital mission, an extensive communications network had to be built. In keeping with his desire to keep from giving the US space program an overtly military flavor, President Eisenhower at first hesitated to give the project top national priority (DX rating under the Defense Production Act), which meant that Mercury had to wait in line behind military projects for materials; however, this rating was granted in May 1959, a little more than a year and a half after Sputnik was launched.


title: Project Mercury

text: Twelve companies bid to build the Mercury spacecraft on a $20 million ($ adjusted for inflation) contract. In January 1959, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation was chosen to be prime contractor for the spacecraft. Two weeks earlier, North American Aviation, based in Los Angeles, was awarded a contract for Little Joe, a small rocket to be used for development of the launch escape system. The World Wide Tracking Network for communication between the ground and spacecraft during a flight was awarded to the Western Electric Company. Redstone rockets for suborbital launches were manufactured in Huntsville, Alabama, by the Chrysler Corporation and Atlas rockets by Convair in San Diego, California. For crewed launches, the Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida was made available by the USAF. This was also the site of the Mercury Control Center while the computing center of the communication network was in Goddard Space Center, Maryland. Little Joe rockets were launched from Wallops Island, Virginia. Astronaut training took place at Langley Research Center in Virginia, Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio, and Naval Air Development Center Johnsville in Warminster, PA. Langley wind tunnels together with a rocket sled track at Holloman Air Force Base at Alamogordo, New Mexico were used for aerodynamic studies. Both Navy and Air Force aircraft were made available for the development of the spacecraft's landing system, and Navy ships and Navy and Marine Corps helicopters were made available for recovery. South of Cape Canaveral the town of Cocoa Beach boomed. From here, 75,000 people watched the first American orbital flight being launched in 1962.


title: Project Mercury

text: The Mercury spacecraft's principal designer was Maxime Faget, who started research for human spaceflight during the time of the NACA. It was long and wide; with the launch escape system added, the overall length was . With of habitable volume, the capsule was just large enough for a single crew member. Inside were 120 controls: 55 electrical switches, 30 fuses and 35 mechanical levers. The heaviest spacecraft, Mercury-Atlas 9, weighed fully loaded. Its outer skin was made of René 41, a nickel alloy able to withstand high temperatures.


title: Project Mercury

text: The spacecraft was cone shaped, with a neck at the narrow end. It had a convex base, which carried a heat shield (Item 2 in the diagram below) consisting of an aluminum honeycomb covered with multiple layers of fiberglass. Strapped to it was a retropack (1) consisting of three rockets deployed to brake the spacecraft during reentry. Between these were three minor rockets for separating the spacecraft from the launch vehicle at orbital insertion. The straps that held the package could be severed when it was no longer needed. Next to the heat shield was the pressurized crew compartment (3). Inside, an astronaut would be strapped to a form-fitting seat with instruments in front of him and with his back to the heat shield. Underneath the seat was the environmental control system supplying oxygen and heat, scrubbing the air of CO, vapor and odors, and (on orbital flights) collecting urine. The recovery compartment (4) at the narrow end of the spacecraft contained three parachutes: a drogue to stabilize free fall and two main chutes, a primary and reserve. Between the heat shield and inner wall of the crew compartment was a landing skirt, deployed by letting down the heat shield before landing. On top of the recovery compartment was the antenna section (5) containing both antennas for communication and scanners for guiding spacecraft orientation. Attached was a flap used to ensure the spacecraft was faced heat shield first during reentry. A launch escape system (6) was mounted to the narrow end of the spacecraft containing three small solid-fueled rockets which could be fired briefly in a launch failure to separate the capsule safely from its booster. It would deploy the capsule's parachute for a landing nearby at sea. (See also Mission profile for details.)


title: Project Mercury

text: The Mercury spacecraft did not have an on-board computer, instead relying on all computation for reentry to be calculated by computers on the ground, with their results (retrofire times and firing attitude) then transmitted to the spacecraft by radio while in flight. All computer systems used in the Mercury space program were housed in NASA facilities on Earth. (See Ground control for details.)


title: Project Mercury

text: The astronaut lay in a sitting position with his back to the heat shield, which was found to be the position that best enabled a human to withstand the high g-forces of launch and reentry. A fiberglass seat was custom-molded from each astronaut's space-suited body for maximum support. Near his left hand was a manual abort handle to activate the launch escape system if necessary prior to or during liftoff, in case the automatic trigger failed.


title: Project Mercury

text: To supplement the onboard environmental control system, he wore a pressure suit with its own oxygen supply, which would also cool him. A cabin atmosphere of pure oxygen at a low pressure of (equivalent to an altitude of ) was chosen, rather than one with the same composition as air (nitrogen/oxygen) at sea level. This was easier to control, avoided the risk of decompression sickness ("the bends"), and also saved on spacecraft weight. Fires (which never occurred) would have to be extinguished by emptying the cabin of oxygen. In such case, or failure of the cabin pressure for any reason, the astronaut could make an emergency return to Earth, relying on his suit for survival. The astronauts normally flew with their visor up, which meant that the suit was not inflated. With the visor down and the suit inflated, the astronaut could only reach the side and bottom panels, where vital buttons and handles were placed.


title: Project Mercury

text: The astronaut also wore electrodes on his chest to record his heart rhythm, a cuff that could take his blood pressure, and a rectal thermometer to record his temperature (this was replaced by an oral thermometer on the last flight). Data from these was sent to the ground during the flight. The astronaut normally drank water and ate food pellets.


title: Project Mercury

text: Once in orbit, the spacecraft could be rotated in yaw, pitch, and roll: along its longitudinal axis (roll), left to right from the astronaut's point of view (yaw), and up or down (pitch). Movement was created by rocket-propelled thrusters which used hydrogen peroxide as a fuel. For orientation, the pilot could look through the window in front of him or he could look at a screen connected to a periscope with a camera which could be turned 360°.


title: Project Mercury

text: The Mercury astronauts had taken part in the development of their spacecraft, and insisted that manual control, and a window, be elements of its design. As a result, spacecraft movement and other functions could be controlled three ways: remotely from the ground when passing over a ground station, automatically guided by onboard instruments, or manually by the astronaut, who could replace or override the two other methods. Experience validated the astronauts' insistence on manual controls. Without them, Gordon Cooper's manual reentry during the last flight would not have been possible.


title: Project Mercury

text: The Mercury spacecraft design was modified three times by NASA between 1958 and 1959. After bidding by potential contractors had been completed, NASA selected the design submitted as "C" in November 1958. After it failed a test flight in July 1959, a final configuration, "D", emerged. The heat shield shape had been developed earlier in the 1950s through experiments with ballistic missiles, which had shown a blunt profile would create a shock wave that would lead most of the heat around the spacecraft. To further protect against heat, either a heat sink, or an ablative material, could be added to the shield. The heat sink would remove heat by the flow of the air inside the shock wave, whereas the ablative heat shield would remove heat by a controlled evaporation of the ablative material. After uncrewed tests, the latter was chosen for crewed flights. Apart from the capsule design, a rocket plane similar to the existing X-15 was considered. This approach was still too far from being able to make a spaceflight, and was consequently dropped. The heat shield and the stability of the spacecraft were tested in wind tunnels, and later in flight. The launch escape system was developed through uncrewed flights. During a period of problems with development of the landing parachutes, alternative landing systems such as the Rogallo glider wing were considered, but ultimately scrapped.


title: Project Mercury

text: The spacecraft were produced at McDonnell Aircraft, St. Louis, Missouri, in clean rooms and tested in vacuum chambers at the McDonnell plant. The spacecraft had close to 600 subcontractors, such as Garrett AiResearch which built the spacecraft's environmental control system. Final quality control and preparations of the spacecraft were made at Hangar S at Cape Canaveral. NASA ordered 20 production spacecraft, numbered 1 through 20. Five of the 20, Nos. 10, 12, 15, 17, and 19, were not flown. Spacecraft No. 3 and No. 4 were destroyed during uncrewed test flights. Spacecraft No. 11 sank and was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after 38 years. Some spacecraft were modified after initial production (refurbished after launch abort, modified for longer missions, etc.). A number of Mercury boilerplate spacecraft (made from non-flight materials or lacking production spacecraft systems) were also made by NASA and McDonnell. They were designed and used to test spacecraft recovery systems and the escape tower. McDonnell also built the spacecraft simulators used by the astronauts during training, and adopted the motto "First Free Man in Space".


title: Project Mercury

text: A launch vehicle called Little Joe was used for uncrewed tests of the launch escape system, using a Mercury capsule with an escape tower mounted on it. Its main purpose was to test the system at max q, when aerodynamic forces against the spacecraft peaked, making separation of the launch vehicle and spacecraft most difficult. It was also the point at which the astronaut was subjected to the heaviest vibrations. The Little Joe rocket used solid-fuel propellant and was originally designed in 1958 by NACA for suborbital crewed flights, but was redesigned for Project Mercury to simulate an Atlas-D launch. It was produced by North American Aviation. It was not able to change direction; instead its flight depended on the angle from which it was launched. Its maximum altitude was fully loaded. A Scout launch vehicle was used for a single flight intended to evaluate the tracking network; however, it failed and was destroyed from the ground shortly after launch.


title: Project Mercury

text: The Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle was an (with capsule and escape system) single-stage launch vehicle used for suborbital (ballistic) flights. It had a liquid-fueled engine that burned alcohol and liquid oxygen producing about of thrust, which was not enough for orbital missions. It was a descendant of the German V-2, and developed for the U.S. Army during the early 1950s. It was modified for Project Mercury by removing the warhead and adding a collar for supporting the spacecraft together with material for damping vibrations during launch. Its rocket motor was produced by North American Aviation and its direction could be altered during flight by its fins. They worked in two ways: by directing the air around them, or by directing the thrust by their inner parts (or both at the same time). Both the Atlas-D and Redstone launch vehicles contained an automatic abort sensing system which allowed them to abort a launch by firing the launch escape system if something went wrong. The Jupiter rocket, also developed by Von Braun's team at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, was considered as well for intermediate Mercury suborbital flights at a higher speed and altitude than Redstone, but this plan was dropped when it turned out that man-rating Jupiter for the Mercury program would actually cost more than flying an Atlas due to economics of scale. Jupiter's only use other than as a missile system was for the short-lived Juno II launch vehicle, and keeping a full staff of technical personnel around solely to fly a few Mercury capsules would result in excessively high costs.


title: Project Mercury

text: Orbital missions required use of the Atlas LV-3B, a man-rated version of the Atlas D which was originally developed as the United States' first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by Convair for the Air Force during the mid-1950s. The Atlas was a "one-and-one-half-stage" rocket fueled by kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX). The rocket by itself stood high; total height of the Atlas-Mercury space vehicle at launch was .


title: Project Mercury

text: The Atlas first stage was a booster skirt with two engines burning liquid fuel. This, together with the larger sustainer second stage, gave it sufficient power to launch a Mercury spacecraft into orbit. Both stages fired from lift-off with the thrust from the second stage sustainer engine passing through an opening in the first stage. After separation from the first stage, the sustainer stage continued alone. The sustainer also steered the rocket by thrusters guided by gyroscopes. Smaller vernier rockets were added on its sides for precise control of maneuvers.


title: Project Mercury

text: Alan Shepard became the first American in space by making a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961. Mercury-Redstone 3, Shepard's 15 minute and 28 second flight of the "Freedom 7" capsule demonstrated the ability to withstand the high g-forces of launch and atmospheric re-entry. Shepard later went on to fly in the Apollo program and became the only Mercury astronaut to walk on the Moon on Apollo 14.


title: Project Mercury

text: Gus Grissom became the second American in space on Mercury-Redstone 4 on July 21, 1961. After the splashdown of "Liberty Bell 7", the side hatch opened and caused the capsule to sink although Grissom was able to be safely recovered. His flight also gave NASA the confidence to move onto orbital flights. Grissom went on to participate in the Gemini and Apollo programs, but died in January 1967 during a pre-launch test for Apollo 1.


title: Project Mercury

text: John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on Mercury-Atlas 6 February 20, 1962. During the flight, the spacecraft "Friendship 7" experienced issues with its automatic control system but Glenn was able to manually control the spacecraft's attitude. He quit NASA in 1964, when he came to the conclusion that he likely wouldn't be selected for any Apollo missions and later got elected to the US Senate, serving from 1974 to 1999. During his tenure, he returned to space in 1998 as a Payload Specialist aboard STS-95.


title: Project Mercury

text: Scott Carpenter was the second astronaut in orbit and flew on Mercury-Atlas 7 on May 24, 1962. The spaceflight was essentially a repeat of Mercury-Atlas 6, but a targeting error during re-entry took "Aurora 7" 250 miles (400 km) off-course, delaying recovery. Afterwards, he joined the Navy's "Man in the Sea" program and is the only American to be both an astronaut and an aquanaut. Carpenter's Mercury flight was his only trip into space.


title: Project Mercury

text: Wally Schirra flew aboard "Sigma 7" on Mercury-Atlas 8 on October 3, 1962. The mission's main goal was to show development of environmental controls or life-support systems that would allow for safety in space, thus being a flight mainly focused on technical evaluation, rather than scientific experimentation. The mission lasted 9 hours and 13 minutes, setting a new U.S. flight duration record. In December 1965, Schirra flew on Gemini 6A, achieving the first ever space rendezvous with sister spacecraft Gemini 7. Three years later, he commanded the first crewed Apollo mission, Apollo 7, becoming the first astronaut to fly three times and the only person to fly in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.


title: Project Mercury

text: Gordon Cooper made the last flight of Project Mercury with Mercury-Atlas 9 on May 15, 1963. His flight onboard "Faith 7" set the another U.S. endurance record with a 34-hour and 19 minute flight duration, and 22 completed orbits. This mission marks the last time an American was launched alone to conduct an entirely solo orbital mission. Cooper later went on to participate in Project Gemini where he once again beat the endurance record during Gemini 5.


title: Project Mercury

text: Deke Slayton was grounded in 1962 due to a heart condition, but remained with NASA and was appointed senior manager of the Astronaut Office and later additionally assistant director of Flight Crew Operations at the beginning of Project Gemini. On March 13, 1972, after doctors confirmed he no longer had a coronary condition, Slayton returned to flight status and the next year was assigned to the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, which successfully flew in 1975 with Slayton as the docking module pilot. After the ASTP, he managed the Space Shuttle Program's Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) and Orbital Flight Tests (OFT) before retiring from NASA in 1982.


title: Project Mercury

text: One of the astronauts' tasks was publicity; they gave interviews to the press and visited project manufacturing facilities to speak with those who worked on Project Mercury. The press was especially fond of John Glenn, who was considered the best speaker of the seven. They sold their personal stories to "Life" magazine which portrayed them as 'patriotic, God-fearing family men.' "Life" was also allowed to be at home with the families while the astronauts were in space. During the project, Grissom, Carpenter, Cooper, Schirra and Slayton stayed with their families at or near Langley Air Force Base; Glenn lived at the base and visited his family in Washington DC on weekends. Shepard lived with his family at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia.


title: Project Mercury

text: Other than Grissom, who was killed in the 1967 Apollo 1 fire, the other six survived past retirement and died between 1993 and 2016.


title: Project Mercury

text: Prior to Project Mercury, there was no protocol for selecting astronauts, so NASA would set a far-reaching precedent with both their selection process and initial choices for astronauts. At the end of 1958, various ideas for the selection pool were discussed privately within the national government and the civilian space program, and also among the public at large. Initially, there was the idea to issue a widespread public call to volunteers. Thrill-seekers such as rock climbers and acrobats would have been allowed to apply, but this idea was quickly shot down by NASA officials who understood that an undertaking such as space flight required individuals with professional training and education in flight engineering. By late 1958, NASA officials decided to move forward with test pilots being the heart of their selection pool. On President Eisenhower's insistence, the group was further narrowed down to active duty military test pilots, which set the number of candidates at 508. These candidates were USN or USMC naval aviation pilots (NAPs), or USAF pilots of Senior or Command rating. These aviators had long military records, which would give NASA officials more background information on which to base their decisions. Furthermore, these aviators were skilled in flying the most advanced aircraft to date, giving them the best qualifications for the new position of astronaut. During this time, women were banned from flying in the military and so could not successfully qualify as test pilots. This meant that no female candidates could earn consideration for the title of astronaut. Civilian NASA X-15 pilot Neil Armstrong was also disqualified, though he had been selected by the US Air Force in 1958 for its Man in Space Soonest program, which was replaced by Mercury. Although Armstrong had been a combat-experienced NAP during the Korean War, he left active duty in 1952. Armstrong became NASA's first civilian astronaut in 1962 when he was selected for NASA's second group, and became the first man on the Moon in 1969.


title: Project Mercury

text: It was further stipulated that candidates should be between 25 and 40 years old, no taller than , and hold a college degree in a STEM subject. The college degree requirement excluded the USAF's X-1 pilot, then-Lt Col (later Brig Gen) Chuck Yeager, the first person to exceed the speed of sound. He later became a critic of the project, ridiculing the civilian space program, labeling astronauts as "spam in a can." John Glenn did not have a college degree either, but used influential friends to make the selection committee accept him. USAF Capt. (later Col.) Joseph Kittinger, a USAF fighter pilot and stratosphere balloonist, met all the requirements but preferred to stay in his contemporary project. Other potential candidates declined because they did not believe that human spaceflight had a future beyond Project Mercury. From the original 508, 110 candidates were selected for an interview, and from the interviews, 32 were selected for further physical and mental testing. Their health, vision, and hearing were examined, together with their tolerance to noise, vibrations, g-forces, personal isolation, and heat. In a special chamber, they were tested to see if they could perform their tasks under confusing conditions. The candidates had to answer more than 500 questions about themselves and describe what they saw in different images. Navy Lt (later Capt) Jim Lovell, who was later an astronaut in the Gemini and Apollo programs, did not pass the physical tests. After these tests it was intended to narrow the group down to six astronauts, but in the end it was decided to keep seven.


title: Project Mercury

text: The astronauts went through a training program covering some of the same exercises that were used in their selection. They simulated the g-force profiles of launch and reentry in a centrifuge at the Naval Air Development Center, and were taught special breathing techniques necessary when subjected to more than 6 g. Weightlessness training took place in aircraft, first on the rear seat of a two-seater fighter and later inside converted and padded cargo aircraft. They practiced gaining control of a spinning spacecraft in a machine at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory called the Multi-Axis Spin-Test Inertia Facility (MASTIF), by using an attitude controller handle simulating the one in the spacecraft. A further measure for finding the right attitude in orbit was star and Earth recognition training in planetaria and simulators. Communication and flight procedures were practiced in flight simulators, first together with a single person assisting them and later with the Mission Control Center. Recovery was practiced in pools at Langley, and later at sea with frogmen and helicopter crews.


title: Project Mercury

text: A Redstone rocket was used to boost the capsule for 2 minutes and 30 seconds to an altitude of ; the capsule continued ascending on a ballistic curve after booster separation. The launch escape system was jettisoned at the same time. At the top of the curve, the spacecraft's retrorockets were fired for testing purposes; they were not necessary for reentry because orbital speed had not been attained. The spacecraft landed in the Atlantic Ocean. The suborbital mission took about 15 minutes, had an apogee altitude of , and a downrange distance of . From the time of booster-spacecraft separation until reentry where air started to slow down the spacecraft, the pilot would experience weightlessness as shown on the image. The recovery procedure would be the same as an orbital mission.[AS]


title: Project Mercury

text: Preparations for a mission started a month in advance with the selection of the primary and back-up astronaut; they would practice together for the mission. For three days prior to launch, the astronaut went through a special diet to minimize his need for defecating during the flight. On the morning of the trip he typically ate a steak breakfast. After having sensors applied to his body and being dressed in the pressure suit, he started breathing pure oxygen to prepare him for the atmosphere of the spacecraft. He arrived at the launch pad, took the elevator up the launch tower and entered the spacecraft two hours before launch. Once the astronaut was secured inside, the hatch was bolted, the launch area evacuated and the mobile tower rolled back. After this, the launch vehicle was filled with liquid oxygen. The entire procedure of preparing for launch and launching the spacecraft followed a time table called the countdown. It started a day in advance with a pre-count, in which all systems of the launch vehicle and spacecraft were checked. After that followed a 15-hour hold, during which pyrotechnics were installed. Then came the main countdown which for orbital flights started 6½ hours before launch (T – 390 min), counted backwards to launch (T = 0) and then forward until orbital insertion (T + 5 min).


title: Project Mercury

text: On an orbital mission, the Atlas' rocket engines were ignited four seconds before lift-off. The launch vehicle was held to the ground by clamps and then released when sufficient thrust was built up at lift-off (A). After 30 seconds of flight, the point of maximum dynamic pressure against the vehicle was reached, at which the astronaut felt heavy vibrations. After 2 minutes and 10 seconds, the two outboard booster engines shut down and were released with the aft skirt, leaving the center sustainer engine running (B). At this point, the launch escape system was no longer needed, and was separated from the spacecraft by its jettison rocket (C). The space vehicle moved gradually to a horizontal attitude until, at an altitude of , the sustainer engine shut down and the spacecraft was inserted into orbit (D). This happened after 5 minutes and 10 seconds in a direction pointing east, whereby the spacecraft would gain speed from the rotation of the Earth. Here the spacecraft fired the three posigrade rockets for a second to separate it from the launch vehicle. Just before orbital insertion and sustainer engine cutoff, g-loads peaked at 8 g (6 g for a suborbital flight). In orbit, the spacecraft automatically turned 180°, pointed the retropackage forward and its nose 14.5° downward and kept this attitude for the rest of the orbital phase to facilitate communication with the ground.


title: Project Mercury

text: Once in orbit, it was not possible for the spacecraft to change its trajectory except by initiating reentry. Each orbit would typically take 88 minutes to complete. The lowest point of the orbit, called perigee, was at about altitude, and the highest point, called apogee, was about altitude. When leaving orbit (E), the angle of retrofire was 34° downward from the flight path angle. Retrorockets fired for 10 seconds each (F) in a sequence where one started 5 seconds after the other. During reentry (G), the astronaut would experience about 8 g (11–12 g on a suborbital mission). The temperature around the heat shield rose to and at the same time, there was a two-minute radio blackout due to ionization of the air around the spacecraft.


title: Project Mercury

text: After reentry, a small, drogue parachute (H) was deployed at for stabilizing the spacecraft's descent. The main parachute (I) was deployed at starting with a narrow opening that opened fully in a few seconds to lessen the strain on the lines. Just before hitting the water, the landing bag inflated from behind the heat shield to reduce the force of impact (J). Upon landing the parachutes were released. An antenna (K) was raised and sent out signals that could be traced by ships and helicopters. Further, a green marker dye was spread around the spacecraft to make its location more visible from the air. Frogmen brought in by helicopters inflated a collar around the craft to keep it upright in the water. The recovery helicopter hooked onto the spacecraft and the astronaut blew the escape hatch to exit the capsule. He was then hoisted aboard the helicopter that finally brought both him and the spacecraft to the ship.


title: Project Mercury

text: The number of personnel supporting a Mercury mission was typically around 18,000, with about 15,000 people associated with recovery. Most of the others followed the spacecraft from the World Wide Tracking Network, a chain of 18 stations placed around the equator, which was based on a network used for satellites and made ready in 1960. It collected data from the spacecraft and provided two-way communication between the astronaut and the ground. Each station had a range of and a pass typically lasted 7 minutes. Mercury astronauts on the ground would take the role of Capsule Communicator, or CAPCOM, who communicated with the astronaut in orbit. Data from the spacecraft were sent to the ground, processed at the Goddard Space Center by a redundant pair of transistorized IBM 7090 computers and relayed to the Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral. In the Control Center, the data were displayed on boards on each side of a world map, which showed the position of the spacecraft, its ground track and the place it could land in an emergency within the next 30 minutes.


title: Project Mercury

text: Other computers associated with ground control for Mercury included a vacuum-tube-based IBM 709 system in Cape Canaveral which determined whether a mid-launch abort might be needed and where an aborting capsule would land, another IBM 709 in Bermuda which served as backup for the two IBM 7090 transistor-based machines at Goddard, and a Burroughs-GE system which provided radio guidance for the Atlas during launch.


title: Project Mercury

text: The World Wide Tracking Network went on to serve subsequent space programs, until it was replaced by a satellite relay system in the 1980s. Mission Control Center was moved from Cape Canaveral to Houston in 1965.


title: Project Mercury

text: On April 12, 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space on an orbital flight. He was not present in his spacecraft during landing thus technically his mission was not initially considered as the first complete human spaceflight by then World Air Sports Federation's definitions, although later it recognized that Gagarin was the first human to fly into space. Alan Shepard became the first American in space on a suborbital flight three weeks later, on May 5, 1961. John Glenn, the third Mercury astronaut to fly, became the first American to reach orbit on February 20, 1962, but only after the Soviets had launched a second cosmonaut, Gherman Titov, into a day-long flight in August 1961. Three more Mercury orbital flights were made, ending on May 16, 1963, with a day-long, 22 orbit flight. However, the Soviet Union ended its Vostok program the next month, with the human spaceflight endurance record set by the 82-orbit, almost 5-day Vostok 5 flight.


title: Project Mercury

text: All of the six crewed Mercury flights were successful, though some planned flights were canceled during the project (see below). The main medical problems encountered were simple personal hygiene, and post-flight symptoms of low blood pressure. The launch vehicles had been tested through uncrewed flights, therefore the numbering of crewed missions did not start with 1. Also, there were two separately numbered series: MR for "Mercury-Redstone" (suborbital flights), and MA for "Mercury-Atlas" (orbital flights). These names were not popularly used, since the astronauts followed a pilot tradition, each giving their spacecraft a name. They selected names ending with a "7" to commemorate the seven astronauts. Times given are Universal Coordinated Time, local time + 5 hours. MA = Mercury-Atlas, MR = Mercury-Redstone, LC = Launch Complex.


title: Project Mercury

text: The 20 uncrewed flights used Little Joe, Redstone, and Atlas launch vehicles. They were used to develop the launch vehicles, launch escape system, spacecraft and tracking network. One flight of a Scout rocket attempted to launch a specialized satellite equipped with Mercury communications components for testing the ground tracking network, but the booster failed soon after liftoff. The Little Joe program used seven airframes for eight flights, of which three were successful. The second Little Joe flight was named Little Joe 6, because it was inserted into the program after the first 5 airframes had been allocated.


title: Project Mercury

text: Nine of the planned flights were canceled. Suborbital flights were planned for four other astronauts but the number of flights was cut down gradually and finally all remaining were canceled after Titov's flight. Mercury-Atlas 9 was intended to be followed by more one-day flights and even a three-day flight but with the coming of the Gemini Project it seemed unnecessary. The Jupiter booster was, as mentioned above, intended to be used for different purposes.


title: Project Mercury

text: Today the Mercury program is commemorated as the first American human space program. It did not win the race against the Soviet Union, but gave back national prestige and was scientifically a successful precursor of later programs such as Gemini, Apollo and Skylab.


title: Project Mercury

text: During the 1950s, some experts doubted that human spaceflight was possible. Still, when John F. Kennedy was elected president, many, including he, had doubts about the project. As president he chose to support the programs a few months before the launch of "Freedom 7", which became a public success. Afterwards, a majority of the American public supported human spaceflight, and, within a few weeks, Kennedy announced a plan for a crewed mission to land on the Moon and return safely to Earth before the end of the 1960s.


title: Project Mercury

text: The six astronauts who flew were awarded medals, driven in parades and two of them were invited to address a joint session of the US Congress. Seeing as no women previously met the qualifications for the astronaut program, the question was raised as to whether or not they could. This led to the development of a project named Mercury 13 by the media, in which thirteen American women successfully underwent the tests. The Mercury 13 program was not officially conducted by NASA. It was created by NASA physician William Randolph Lovelace, who developed the physical and psychological tests used to select NASA's first seven male astronauts for Project Mercury. The women completed physical and psychological tests, but were never required to complete the training as the privately funded program was quickly cancelled. No female candidates adequately met the qualifications for the astronaut program until 1978, when a few finally qualified for the Space Shuttle program.


title: Project Mercury

text: On February 25, 2011, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world's largest technical professional society, awarded Boeing (the successor company to McDonnell Aircraft) a Milestone Award for important inventions which debuted on the Mercury spacecraft.


title: Project Mercury

text: On film the program was portrayed in "The Right Stuff", a 1983 adaptation of Tom Wolfe's 1979 book of the same name, in the 1998 HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon", in the 2016 film "Hidden Figures" and the 2020 Disney+ series "The Right Stuff" which is also based on the Tom Wolfe book.


title: Project Mercury

text: In 1964, a monument commemorating Project Mercury was unveiled near Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral, featuring a metal logo combining the symbol of Mercury with the number 7. In 1962, the United States Postal Service honored the Mercury-Atlas 6 flight with a Project Mercury commemorative stamp, the first US postal issue to depict a crewed spacecraft.


title: Project Mercury

text: The spacecraft that flew, together with some that did not, are on display in the United States. "Friendship 7" (capsule No. 13) went on a global tour, popularly known as its "fourth orbit".


title: Project Mercury

text: Commemorative patches were designed by entrepreneurs after the Mercury program to satisfy collectors.


title: Oblast

text: An oblast (; ; Cyrillic (in most languages, including Russian and Ukrainian): , Bulgarian: ) is a type of administrative division of Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as the Soviet Union and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.


title: Oblast

text: Official terms in successor states of the Soviet Union differ, but some still use a cognate of the Russian term, e.g., vobłasć (voblasts, voblasts, official orthography: , Taraškievica: , ) is used for regions of Belarus, (plural: ') for regions of Kazakhstan, and oblusu (') for regions of Kyrgyzstan.


title: Oblast

text: The term is often translated as "area", "zone", "province" or "region". The last translation may lead to confusion, because "raion" may be used for other kinds of administrative division, which may be translated as "region", "district" or "county" depending on the context.


title: Oblast

text: Unlike "province", translations as "area", "zone", and "region" may lead to confusion because they have very common meanings other than a political division.


title: Oblast

text: Since 1999, Bulgaria has been divided into 28 "oblasts", usually translated as "provinces". Before, the country was divided into just nine units, also called "oblasts".


title: Oblast

text: In the Russian Empire, oblasts were considered to be administrative units and were included as parts of Governorates General or krais. The majority of then-existing oblasts were on the periphery of the country (e.g. Kars Oblast or Transcaspian Oblast) or covered the areas where Cossacks lived.


title: Oblast

text: In the Soviet Union, oblasts were one of the types of administrative divisions of the union republics. As any administrative units of this level, oblasts were composed of districts ("raions") and cities/towns directly under oblasts' jurisdiction. Some oblasts also included autonomous entities called autonomous okrugs. Because of the Soviet Union electrification program under the GOELRO plan, Ivan Alexandrov, as director of the Regionalisation Committee of Gosplan, divided the Soviet Union into thirteen European and eight Asiatic oblasts, using rational economic planning rather than "the vestiges of lost sovereign rights".


title: Oblast

text: The names of oblasts did not usually correspond to the names of the respective historical regions, as they were created as purely administrative units. With a few exceptions, Soviet oblasts were named after their administrative centers.


title: Oblast

text: "Viloyat" and "welaýat" are derived from the Turkish language term "vilayet", itself derived from the Arabic language term "wilāya" ()


title: Oblast

text: In Ukraine, an oblast ( ; in English called a province or region) refers to one of the country's 24 primary administrative units. Since Ukraine is a unitary state, the provinces (or regions) do not have much legal scope of competence other than that which is established in the Ukrainian Constitution and by law. Articles 140–146 of of the constitution deal directly with local authorities and their competency.


title: Oblast

text: In 1922, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was divided into 33 administrative divisions also called oblasts. In 1929, oblasts were replaced with larger administrative units known as banovinas.


title: Oblast

text: During the Yugoslav Wars, several Serb Autonomous Oblasts were formed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. These oblasts were later merged into the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the Republika Srpska.


title: Cochlear implant

text: A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech understanding in both quiet and noisy environments. A CI bypasses acoustic hearing by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Through everyday listening and auditory training, cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret those signals as speech and sound.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The implant has two main components. The outside component is generally worn behind the ear, but could also be attached to clothing, for example, in young children. This component, the sound processor, contains microphones, electronics that include digital signal processor (DSP) chips, battery, and a coil that transmits a signal to the implant across the skin. The inside component, the actual implant, has a coil to receive signals, electronics, and an array of electrodes which is placed into the cochlea, which stimulate the cochlear nerve.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The surgical procedure is performed under general anesthesia. Surgical risks are minimal and most individuals will undergo outpatient surgery and go home the same day. However, some individuals will experience dizziness, and on rare occasions, tinnitus or facial nerve bruising.


title: Cochlear implant

text: From the early days of implants in the 1970s and the 1980s, speech perception via an implant has steadily increased. More than 200,000 people in the United States had received a CI through 2019. Many users of modern implants gain reasonable to good hearing and speech perception skills post-implantation, especially when combined with lipreading. One of the challenges that remain with these implants is that hearing and speech understanding skills after implantation show a wide range of variation across individual implant users. Factors such as age of implantation, parental involvement and education level, duration and cause of hearing loss, how the implant is situated in the cochlea, the overall health of the cochlear nerve, but also individual capabilities of re-learning are considered to contribute to this variation.


title: Cochlear implant

text: André Djourno and Charles Eyriès invented the original cochlear implant in 1957. This original design distributed stimulation using a single channel.


title: Cochlear implant

text: William House also invented a cochlear implant in 1961. In 1964, Blair Simmons and Robert J. White implanted a single-channel electrode in a patient's cochlea at Stanford University. However, research indicated that these single-channel cochlear implants were of limited usefulness because they cannot stimulate different areas of the cochlea at different times to allow differentiation between low and mid to high frequencies as required for detecting speech.


title: Cochlear implant

text: NASA engineer Adam Kissiah started working in the mid-1970s on what would become the modern cochlear implant. Kissiah used his knowledge learned while working as an electronics instrumentation engineer at NASA. This work took place over three years, when Kissiah would spend his lunch breaks and evenings in Kennedy's technical library, studying the impact of engineering principles on the inner ear. In 1977, NASA helped Kissiah obtain a patent for the cochlear implant; Kissiah later sold the patent rights.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The modern multi-channel cochlear implant was independently developed and commercialized by two separate teams—one led by Graeme Clark in Australia and another by Ingeborg Hochmair and her future husband, Erwin Hochmair in Austria, with the Hochmairs' device first implanted in a person in December 1977 and Clark's in August 1978.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Cochlear implants bypass most of the peripheral auditory system which receives sound and converts that sound into movements of hair cells in the cochlea; the deflection of stereocilia causes an influx of potassium ions into the hair cells, and the depolarisation in turn stimulates calcium influx, which increases release of the neurotransmitter, glutamate. Excitation of the cochlear nerve send signals to the brain, which creates the experience of sound. Instead, the devices pick up sound and digitize it, convert that digitized sound into electrical signals, and transmit those signals to electrodes embedded in the cochlea. The electrodes electrically stimulate the cochlear nerve, causing it to send signals to the brain.


title: Cochlear implant

text: A totally implantable cochlear implant (TICI) is currently in development. This new type of cochlear implant incorporates all the current external components of an audio processor into the internal implant. The lack of external components makes the implant invisible from the outside and also means it is less likely to be damaged or break.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Most modern cochlear implants can be used with a range of assistive listening devices (ALDs), which help people to hear better in challenging listening situations. These situations could include talking on the phone, watching TV or listening to a speaker or teacher. With an ALD, the sound from devices including mobile phones or from an external microphone is sent to the audio processor directly, rather than being picked up by the audio processor's microphone. This direct transmission improves the sound quality for the user, making it easier to talk on the phone or stream music.


title: Cochlear implant

text: ALDs come in many forms, such as neckloops, pens, and specialist battery pack covers. Modern ALDs are usually able to receive sound from any Bluetooth device, including phones and computers, before transmitting it wirelessly to the audio processor. Most cochlear implants are also compatible with older ALD technology, such as a telecoil.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Implantation of children and adults can be done safely with few surgical complications and most individuals will undergo outpatient surgery and go home the same day.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Occasionally, the very young, the very old, or patients with a significant number of medical comorbidities may remain for overnight observation in the hospital. The procedure can be performed in an ambulatory surgery center in healthy individuals.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The surgical procedure most often used to implant the device is called mastoidectomy with facial recess approach (MFRA).


title: Cochlear implant

text: The procedure is usually done under general anesthesia. Complications of the procedure are rare, but include mastoiditis, otitis media (acute or with effusion), shifting of the implanted device requiring a second procedure, damage to the facial nerve, damage to the chorda tympani, and wound infections.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Cochlear implantation surgery is considered a clean procedure with an infection rate of less than 3%. Guidelines suggest that routine prophylactic antibiotics are not required. However, the potential cost of a postoperative infection is high (including the possibility of implant loss); therefore, a single preoperative intravenous injection of antibiotics is recommended.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The rate of complications is about 12% for minor complications and 3% for major complications; major complications include infections, facial paralysis, and device failure.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Although up to 20 new cases of post-CI bacterial meningitis occur annually worldwide, data demonstrates a reducing incidence. To avoid the risk of bacterial meningitis, the CDC recommends that adults and children undergoing CI receive age-appropriate vaccines that generate antibodies to Streptococcus pneumoniae.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The rate of transient facial nerve palsy is estimated to be approximately 1%. Device failure requiring reimplantation is estimated to occur 2.5–6% of the time. Up to one-third of people experience disequilibrium, vertigo, or vestibular weakness lasting more than one week after the procedure; in people under 70 these symptoms generally resolve over weeks to months, but in people over 70 the problems tend to persist.


title: Cochlear implant

text: In the past, cochlear implants were only approved for people who were deaf in both ears; a cochlear implant had been used experimentally in some people who had acquired deafness in one ear after they had learned how to speak, and none who were deaf in one ear from birth; clinical studies had been too small to draw generalizations.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Other approaches, such as going through the suprameatal triangle, are used. A systematic literature review published in 2016 found that studies comparing the two approaches were generally small, not randomized, and retrospective so were not useful for making generalizations; it is not known which approach is safer or more effective.


title: Cochlear implant

text: With the increased utilization of endoscopic ear surgery as popularized by professor Tarabichi, there have been multiple published reports on the use of endsocopic technique in cochlear impant surgery. However, this has been motivated by marketing and there is clear indication of increased morbidity associated with this technique as reported by the pioneer of endoscopic ear surgery.


title: Cochlear implant

text: As cochlear implant surgical techniques have advanced over the last four decades, the global complication rate for CI surgery in both children and adults has decreased from >35% in 1991 to less than 10% at present. The risk of postoperative facial nerve injury has also decreased over the last several decades to less than 1%, most of which demonstrated complete return of function within six months. The rate of permanent paralysis is approximately 1 per 1,000 surgeries and likely less than that in experienced CI centers.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The majority of complications following CI surgery are minor requiring only conservative medical management or prolongation of hospital stay. Less than 5% of all complications are major resulting in surgical intervention or readmission to the hospital. Reported rates of revision cochlear implant surgery vary in adults and children from 3.8% to 8% with the most common indications being device failure, infection, and migration of the implant or electrode. Disequilibrium and vertigo after CI surgery can occur but the symptoms tend to be mild and short-lived. CI rarely results in significant or persistent adverse effects on the vestibular system when hearing conservation surgical techniques are practiced. Moreover, gait and postural stability may actually improve post-implantation.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Cochlear implant outcomes can be measured using speech recognition ability and functional improvements measured using patient reported outcome measures. While the degree of improvement after cochlear plantation may vary, the majority of patients who receive cochlear implants demonstrate a significant improvement in speech recognition ability compared to their preoperative condition.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Meta-analyses from 2017 and 2018 of the literature showed that CI users have large improvements in quality of life after cochlear implantation. This improvement occurs in many different facets of life that extends beyond communication including improved ability to engage in social activities; decreased mental effort from listening; and improved environmental sound awareness. Deaf adolescents with cochlear implants attending mainstream educational settings report high levels of scholastic self-esteem, friendship self-esteem, and global self-esteem. They also tend to hold mostly positive attitudes towards their cochlear implants, and as a part of their identity, a majority either do "not really think about" their hearing loss, or are "proud of it." Though advancements in cochlear implant technology have helped patients in their understanding of language, users are still unable to understand suprasegmental portions of language, which includes pitch.


title: Cochlear implant

text: A study by Johns Hopkins University determined that for a three-year-old child who receives them, cochlear implants can save $30,000 to $50,000 in special-education costs for elementary and secondary schools as the child is more likely to be mainstreamed in school and thus use fewer support services than similarly deaf children.


title: Cochlear implant

text: A 2019 study found that bilateral cochlear implantation was widely regarded as the most beneficial hearing intervention for acceptable candidates, although it is more likely to be performed and reimbursed in children than adults. The study also found that the efficacy of bilateral implantation could be improved by enhancing communication between the two implants and by developing sound coding strategies specifically for bilateral users.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Early research reviews found that the ability to communicate in spoken language was better the earlier the implantation was performed. The reviews also found that, overall, while cochlear implants provide open-set speech understanding for the majority of implanted profoundly hearing-impaired children, it was not possible to accurately predict the specific outcome of the given implanted child. Research since then has reported long-term socio-economic benefits for children as well as audiological outcomes including improved sound localization and speech perception. A consensus statement from the European Bilateral Pediatric Cochlear Implant Forum also confirmed the importance of bilateral cochlear implantation in children. In adults, new research shows that bilateral implantation can improve quality of life and speech intelligibility in quiet and noise.


title: Cochlear implant

text: A 2015 review examined whether CI implantation to treat people with bilateral hearing loss had any effect on tinnitus. This review found the quality of evidence to be poor and the results variable: overall total tinnitus suppression rates for patients who had tinnitus prior to surgery varied from 8% to 45% of people who received CI; decrease of tinnitus was seen in 25% to 72%, of people; for 0% to 36% of the people there was no change; increase of tinnitus occurred in between 0% to 25% of patients; and, in between 0 and 10% of cases, people who did not have tinnitus before the procedure, got it. Further research found that the electrical stimulation of the CI is at least partly responsible for the general reduction in symptoms. A 2019 study found that although tinnitus suppression in patients with CIs is multifactorial, simply having the CI switched on without any audiological input (while standing alone in a soundproof booth) reduced the symptoms of tinnitus. This would suggest that it is the electrical stimulation that explains the decrease in tinnitus symptoms for many patients, and not only the increased access to sound.


title: Cochlear implant

text: A 2015 literature review on the use of CI for people with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder found that, as of that date, description and diagnosis of the condition was too heterogeneous to make clear claims about whether CI is a safe and effective way to manage it.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The data for cochlear implant outcomes in older adults differs. A 2016 research study found that age at implantation was highly correlated with post-operative speech understanding performance for various test measures. In this study, people who were implanted at age 65 or older performed significantly worse on speech perception testing in quiet and in noisy conditions compared to younger CI users. Other studies have shown different outcomes, with some reporting that adults implanted at the age of 65 and older showed audiological and speech discrimination outcomes similar to younger adults. While cochlear implants demonstrate substantial benefit across all age groups, results will depend on cognitive factors that are ultimately highly age dependent. However, studies have documented the benefit of cochlear implants in octogenarians.


title: Cochlear implant

text: The effects of aging on central auditory processing abilities are thought to play an important role in impacting an individual's speech perception with a cochlear implant. The Lancet reported that untreated hearing loss in adults is the number one modifiable risk factor for dementia. In 2017, a study also reported that adults using a cochlear implant had significantly improved cognitive outcomes including working memory, reaction time, and cognitive flexibility compared to people who were waiting to receive a cochlear implant.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Prolonged duration of deafness is another factor that is thought to have a negative impact on overall speech understanding outcomes for CI users. However, a study found no statistical difference in the speech understanding abilities of CI patients over 65 who had been hearing impaired for 30 years or more prior to implantation. In general, outcomes for CI patients are dependent upon the individual's level of motivation, expectations, exposure to speech stimuli and consistent participation in aural rehabilitation programs.


title: Cochlear implant

text: A 2016 systematic review of CI for people with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) found that of the studies conducted and published, none were randomized, only one evaluated a control group, and no study was blinded. After eliminating multiple uses of the same subjects, the authors found that 137 people with UHL had received a CI. While acknowledging the weakness of the data, the authors found that CI in people with UHL improves sound localization compared with other treatments in people who lost hearing after they learned to speak; in the one study that examined this, CI did improve sound localization in people with UHL who lost hearing before learning to speak. It appeared to improve speech perception and to reduce tinnitus.


title: Cochlear implant

text: In terms of quality of life, several studies have shown that cochlear implants are beneficial in many aspects of quality of life, including communication improvements and positive effects on social, emotional, psychological and physical well-being. A 2017 narrative review also concluded that the quality of life scores of children using cochlear implants were comparable to those of children without hearing loss. Studies involving adults of all ages reported significant improvement in QoL after implantation when compared to adults with hearing aids. This was often independent of audiological performance.


title: Cochlear implant

text: approximately 188,000 individuals had been fitted with cochlear implants. the same publication cited approximately 324,000 cochlear implant devices having been surgically implanted. In the U.S., roughly 58,000 devices were implanted in adults and 38,000 in children. the Ear Foundation in the United Kingdom, estimates the number of cochlear implant recipients in the world to be about 600,000. The American Cochlear Implant Alliance estimates that 217,000 people received CIs in the United States through the end of 2019.


title: Cochlear implant

text: Cochlear implantation includes the medical device as well as related services and procedures including pre-operative testing, the surgery, and aftercare that includes audiology and speech language pathology services. These are provided over time by a team of clinicians with specialized training. All of these services, as well as the cochlear implant device and related peripherals, are part of the medical intervention and are typically covered by health insurance in the United States and many areas of the world. These medical services and procedures include candidacy evaluation, hospital services inclusive of supplies and medications used during surgery, surgeon and other physicians such as anesthesiologists, the cochlear implant device and system kit, and programming and (re)habilitation following the surgery. In many countries around the world, the cost of cochlear implantation and aftercare is covered by health insurance.