The Moon Watch - 1962 Selection Trails
For initial tests on the possible watches, NASA purchased the watches incognito over the counter at a
Houston Jewelry store.
The following criteria were to be applied to the tests for the watches.
- Watches wound immediately prior to testing phase
- Stopwatch features should be operated during each test and between tests
- Time accuracy checks before and after each test and at 1 hour intervals during tests (where possible)
- At time checks watches inspected for damage to case, crystal, dial, strap, buttons and presence of moisture
- Watches are with drawn from testing if the following occurs
- failure with no restart capability
- stopwatch capability with no restart capability
- 2 failures of any type, even if restart capability exists
- cracked or broken crystal
- broken winding stem or stopwatch controls
With this criteria, the following tests were conducted :-
- High temperature - 48hrs at 71°C 30mins at 93°C
- Low temperature - 4hrs at -18°C
- Temperature pressure - 10-6atm between -18°C and 71°C 45min cycles
- Relative humidity - between 20°C and 71°C for 240 hrs with 95% humidity
- Oxygen Atmosphere - 100% oxygen atmosphere for 48hrs at 71°C
- Shock - Six shocks of 40g's each in six different directions
- Acceleration - 1g to 7.25g within 333 seconds
- Decompression - 90mins in vacuum at temps of 71°C and 30mins at 93°C
- High Pressure - 1hr at 16 atm
- Vibration - 3 cycles of 30mins
- Acoustic Noise - 130db for 30mins
Only the Omega Speedmaster survived these trail and was selected as the watch of choice by NASA.
