Qualification tests
Three years before the Speedmaster's official qualification, Wally Schirra took his personal CK 2998 aboard Mercury-Atlas 8 (Sigma 7) on October 3, 1962.[8] That same year, per an anecdote repeated by Omega press materials, trade publications, and NASA itself, a number of commercial chronograph wristwatches were furtively purchased from Corrigan's, a Houston jeweler, to evaluate their use for the Gemini and Apollo Programs.[8][9][6] James Ragan, a former NASA engineer responsible for Apollo flight hardware testing, has downplayed this story, calling it a "complete invention". Instead, bids were officially solicited of several brands already familiar to astronauts, including Breitling, Rolex, and Omega, as well as others that produced mechanical chronographs.[10][11] Hamilton submitted a pocket watch and was disqualified from consideration, leaving three contenders: Rolex, Longines-Wittnauer, and Omega. These watches were subjected to tests under extreme conditions:
High temperature: 48 hours at 71° C followed by 30 minutes at 93° C
Low temperature: Four hours at -18° C
Temperature cycling in near-vacuum: Fifteen cycles of heating to 71° C for 45 minutes, followed by cooling to -18° C for 45 minutes at 10-6 atm
Humidity: 250 hours at temperatures between 20° C and 71° C at relative humidity of 95%
Oxygen environment: 100% oxygen at 0.35 atm and 71° C for 48 hours
Shock: Six 11ms 40 G shocks from different directions
Linear acceleration: from 1 to 7.25G within 333 seconds
Low pressure: 90 minutes at 10^-6 atm at 71° C followed by 30 minutes at 93° C
High pressure: 1.6 atm for one hour
Vibration: three cycles of 30 minutes vibration varying from 5 to 2000hz with minimum 8.8G impulse
Acoustic noise: 30 minutes at 130db from 40 to 10,000hz [9][6]
All chronographs tested were mechanical hand-wind models since neither the first automatic chronograph nor the first quartz watch would be available until 1969. The evaluation concluded in March 1965 with the selection of the Speedmaster, which survived the tests while remaining largely within 5 seconds per day rate. [8][6][10][12]
source -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Speedmasterhere. buzz aldrin with the qualified Omega Speedmaster
