Gus Grissom and John Young wanted to depressurize the cabin during their training for Gemini III and open the hatch at a simulated altitude of 46,000 meters. Selling this idea to McDonnell was not easy. McDonnell, as Young later remarked, "certainly didn't want to take the chance of bagging a couple of astronauts in the altitude chamber," and NASA was none too happy about "putting guys in vacuums with nothing between them but that little old lady from Worcester, Massachusetts [the seamstress at the David Clark Company], and her glue pot and that suit."
