Graveline entered the
United States Air Force Medical Service after graduation from medical college. Following internship he attended the primary course in
Aviation Medicine, Class 56C, at
Randolph Air Force Base and was assigned to
Kelly Air Force Base as Chief of the Aviation Medicine Service. Graveline was granted the aeronautical rating of
flight surgeon in February 1957. From September 1957 to June 1958, he attended
Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, where he received his master's degree in
Public Health. He then attended the Aerospace Medical residency at the
Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, completing his residency training in July 1960 at
Brooks Air Force Base and receiving his specialty certification by the American Board in Preventative Medicine. At that time he was assigned to the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory as
research scientist with special interest in prolonged
weightlessness deconditioning and countermeasures. In July 1962, he returned to Brooks Air Force Base where he continued his research, served as intelligence analyst for Soviet
bioastronautics and was active as a NASA flight controller for the
Mercury and
Gemini missions. Graveline authored ten professional publications and reports on biological deconditioning and weightlessness countermeasures. His research involved bed rest and water immersion to study deconditioning. While in the USAF he did the original research on both the extremity
tourniquet and the prototype lower body negative pressure device for use in prolonged zero gravity missions. NASA's operational lower body negative pressure device has seen use in the Soviet MIR, as well as on the shuttle and station research. His 2004 research on space medicine was studying the effect of galactic "heavies" in the brains of mice, using iron ions and NASA's
linear accelerator at
Brookhaven, NY. In June 1965, Graveline was selected with NASA's
first group of scientist astronauts and assigned to
Williams Air Force Base for jet pilot training. He resigned on August 18, 1965, prior to flying in space. He was the first astronaut to resign prior to being assigned a mission. Although this was ascribed to "personal reasons," it was later disclosed in
Deke Slayton's memoir that Graveline resigned due to his impending divorce. According to Slayton, "The program didn't need a scandal. A messy divorce meant a quick ticket back to wherever you came from." His wife Carol had stated in the court papers that her husband had "violent and ungovernable outbursts of temper." == Post-astronautics career ==