Charles Chiharu Kubokawa was born and raised in San Francisco and interned at Tanforan and at Topaz, UT, during WWII. He served in the U.S. Air Force for 5 1/2 years as a flying officer. He graduated from UCLA in 1957 and worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 1963 to 1989.

Last May Kubokawa became the first Japanese American to be inducted into the National Space Foundation’s Space Technology Hall of Fame, as the co-inventor of Temper Foam, a highly resilient material developed at NASA Ames Research Center in the 1970s. “I was trying to develop seating for aerospace vehicles so that people could better survive crashes or impacts. We found that Temper Foam in combination with a special seat structure was good for 36 gs (36 times the force of gravity). The seat can out-survive the aircraft in a crash,” Kubokawa declares. The nonflammable, nontoxic foam is used in space shuttle seats as well as in commercial products like orthopedic seats, football helmets, special car seats, earplugs, and bed mattresses.

The article below describes another highlight of his career – he was the first official NASA aquanaut.

The Purpose of the Mission. In the late 1960s, NASA began development of Skylab, a manned space station which would circle the earth in permanent orbit. Needing to test equipment, food preferences, crew complement and procedures in conditions similar to those that might be encountered on long-term space missions, an undersea habitat replicating Skylab in size and shape was created by NASA in collaboration with the Department of the Interior, General Electric and the U.S. Navy. In 1970, Tektite II was placed 52 feet underwater in a remote corner of beautiful Great Lameshur Bay of St. John Island in the U. S. Virgin Islands. The project’s primary mission was to gather data on operations, living conditions and interpersonal relations in cramped quarters surrounded by a hostile environment. A practical understanding of these factors was crucial to long term space missions in order to plan for optimal crew motivation, morale and efficiency. Results from the Tektite project guided strategies for future lunar and space missions.

The Habitat. The five crew members were shoehorned into cramped quarters amounting to about 500 sq. ft. The structure consisted of two cylinders each 12-1/2 feet wide and 18 feet tall with two rooms in each cylinder.

Living in a Hostile Environment. Although 52 feet underwater doesn’t seem far compared to a trip into outer space, leaving the undersea domicile and returning to the surface on a whim was an impossibility. The atmospheric pressure inside the habitat was two-and-half times that of sea level and required a special nitrogen-rich breathing mixture. If a crew member were to return to the surface without a 20.5 hour decompression process, the oxygen and nitrogen in his bloodstream would have quickly formed bubbles, causing the bends, embolism and certain death. In space an astronaut would experience similar problems if exiting a pressurized space vehicle into the vacuum of space without the proper pressurized life support system.

Kubokawa recalls that a wooden broom chillingly illustrated the destructive power of sudden depressurization. “On the first day of our mission we happened to find a broom left by the cleanup crew. Having a vacuum cleaner, we didn’t need it, so a crew member floated it out of the entry trunk. Once it reached the surface, the broom handle started to fizzle like seltzer and exploded into many fine shreds of wood.”

The Daily Routine. Existence within the hostile environment complicated many routine tasks. Supply transfers via pressure-controlled canisters consumed an entire day every week, as well as the combined efforts of the entire underwater crew and several support divers from the surface. Even something as mundane as using the “head” (toilet) posed difficulties when the commode’s machiolator (grinder) malfunctioned. The crew had to resort to various complicated methods of disposing of human waste for what felt like a very long week before the support team was able to locate and purchase a replacement part from Hong Kong.

Research Projects. In addition to their “housekeeping” duties, the crew made one to three daily underwater explorations outside the habitat. Designed to simulate the EVA (extravehicular activities) operations of future space missions, the undersea excursions enabled the crew to gather scientific data on the marine environment, including the oxygen content of sea water under pressure, movements of marine organisms, identification of previously undiscovered marine species, and the effects of pollution on coral reefs.

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