As We Had A Little Test Yesterday,

here is another one for today,

but not any old test, in 1958, America's new space agency called NASA launched an extensive search for men who would become astronauts, of 508 candidates, the Mercury 7 were selected via a battery of physical, psychological, and intellectual tests, hopefuls sat in extreme heat and cold, did math in 145-decibel rooms (normal conversation is 60 dB), and spent hours in isolation chambers. On top of all that, candidates took 12 intelligence tests. These exams sought to predict a wealth of unknowns: how the men would maneuver spacecraft, if they could problem-solve midflight, and whether they grasped the science that would keep them aloft, while the physical tests can't be taken online, Popular Science is offering us the chance to try a small portion of the intelligence tests those men took 60 years ago, I tried it, if I were in an aircraft, it appears that taking off from the ground would present no problems, or indeed flying it, my problem would be how to construct a long enough ladder to climb out of the hole the aircraft made as I landed it!