How ‘The Fastest Man on Earth' tested supersonic ejection seats on himself
On Dec. 10, 1954, John Stapp, a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon and researcher, hopped into an experimental decelerator sled. It would be his last ride in the sled, testing the limits of gravitational forces on the human body as it accelerates and decelerates. He reached a speed of 632 miles per hour that day, experiencing 46.2 g. It was then the most ever experienced by a human and it made Col. John Stapp 'The Fastest Man on Earth.'
Stapp, his Air Force colleagues and other researchers in the field were experimenting with the physical effects of gravitational forces on the human body for myriad reasons. First and foremost, the jet engine was a relatively new technology, and was being improved all the time. The Cold War was in full swing. Competition with the Soviet Union and the communist bloc was essential for maintaining American air supremacy in a potential conflict. Most importantly, however, man was beginning to slip the surly bonds of earth via rocket.
At the end of World War II, the newly-formed Air Force began testing the limits of powered flight. Consistent technological breakthroughs in manned flight meant that we needed to know just what effects the technology would have on the men who were flying the new technology. Then-Capt. John Stapp, an Air Force doctor who once had dreams of being a pediatrician, instead became aviation's self-made guinea pig. He tested how men could function at high altitudes, including the extreme cold, the lack of air and even the possibility of decompression sickness from pressure changes. Not content to experiment on some poor airman, he volunteered himself.
The case of the ejection seat was no different. Physicists, doctors and engineers needed to know what happened to a person during both rapid acceleration and rapid deceleration – and deceleration meant testing for what could happen in an aircraft crash. When Stapp joined the Aero Med Lab, it was widely believed that 18 g was the maximum a human body could withstand. Accident reports made during World War II directly contradicted this assumption.
Air Force engineers built a rocket sled to test the gravitational forces on real human bodies, aircraft seats and protective harnesses. The 2000-foot long track with a series of hydraulic brakes at the end was dubbed the 'Gee Whiz,' and could slow the sled from 150 miles per hour to half that in a fraction of a second. This reproduced the gravitational forces experienced during aircraft crashes.
The test subject was supposed to be a dummy named Oscar Eightball. On the first tests, the brakes failed, sending Oscar and the sled into the desert. When they figured out the braking system, the first operational test sent Oscar, secured in just a seatbelt, through one-inch canopy glass at 30 g-forces, shredding the glass (and the dummy's face) like it was a paper bag. After 35 shocking tests, the sled was ready for a manned test. Not only did Stapp test it on himself first, he personally performed more of the harness tests than any other human subject.
By 1948, Stapp had already survived more than 18 g. His limit after 16 tests was, in fact, a whopping 35. He wasn't immune, either. The tests tore out dental fillings, cracked ribs and broke bones. He reportedly reset bones on his way back to his office after test runs.
As Stapp ran his tests, neither the Aero Med Lab nor the Air Force knew he was gathering data by testing on himself. When they found out, he was warned to stop using humans, himself included, and was promoted to major in the hopes that he might actually listen. The data he gathered was used to create new air transport procedures, replace harnesses and develop a side-saddle harness for paratroopers.
He would need to go faster if he was going to make real progress. Pilots were breaking the sound barrier by then and Stapp needed to expand his testing. At Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, he began using a sled system that was once used to test missiles. For his 29th and final test run, the sled would go transonic, 0.9 Mach, and Stapp would endure the most g-forces of any human so far, protected by only a helmet and visor. The sled shot off like a bullet – faster than a bullet, actually – subjecting Stapp to 20 g at 632 miles per hour. The brakes stopped the sled in a fraction of a second.
When ambulance crews got to Stapp, he was not only alive, he was reportedly smiling. His eyes were filled with blood but it was only temporary. He'd proven that a pilot could eject at 40,000 feet while flying 1.6 Mach.
After Stapp's ride to become the 'Fastest Man on Earth' came to an end, the colonel himself still believed that the human body could withstand more. The Air Force refused to let him test his theory, of course. He told reporters the gravitational force on his head felt like the forcible removal of a tooth – a sensation he felt in his eyes. But he had no lasting medical issues associated with the experiments. He was correct about the body withstanding more force. In 2003, race car driver Kenny Brack felt the highest horizontal g-forces by a human being ever, when a crash propelled him to 214 g at Texas Motor Speedway.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Conrad ‘Gus' Shinn, first pilot to land at the South Pole, dies at 102
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Looking back on the flight, Commander Shinn said that getting to the pole was the easy part. Getting back proved far more challenging, requiring the use of more than a dozen small rockets to dislodge the plane from the ice and provide enough thrust for takeoff. Advertisement Friends said that long after he retired, when he was introduced to strangers as 'the first man to land at the South Pole,' he would gently note: 'Well, that's true. But more importantly, I'm the first man to take off from the South Pole.' By flying to the pole and back, Commander Shinn — who died May 15 at 102 ― helped open up a new era of Antarctic research, demonstrating that it was possible for personnel and supplies to be flown to one of the world's most desolate places. By his count, he made about 17 South Pole flights, providing assistance to Navy construction workers who began creating a permanent research base, a precursor to today's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a few weeks after his first trip. Advertisement Scientists continue to conduct experiments at the pole, including on air quality, seismic waves, and elementary particles known as neutrinos. Tractors make the weeks-long trek to bring supplies overland from McMurdo Station. And supply planes continue to fly in and out, although the aircraft — ski-equipped LC-130s, carrying as much as 42,000 pounds of cargo — are more powerful and better equipped than the planes flown by Commander Shinn and his colleagues. 'Everything was critical in that day: attitude and altitude and air speed, weight and balance. We hardly stayed in the air,' he said in a 1999 interview for the Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project. A North Carolina native who joined the Navy during World War II, Commander Shinn started out as a multiengine pilot in the South Pacific, transporting medical supplies and wounded men. He later flew military brass and other VIPs, ferrying flag officers, Cabinet secretaries, and friends of President Harry S. Truman, before volunteering for Operation Highjump, a Navy program that brought him to Antarctica for the first time in 1947. By then, the Navy had been involved in Antarctic exploration for years, supporting scientific research while also — amid a Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union — seeking 'to establish a foothold in a region of the world that could be strategically important,' said Hill Goodspeed, a historian at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla. Advertisement To prepare for the mission, Commander Shinn took a transport plane equipped with skis and tested it on the ice in Edmonton, Alberta. He went on to fly a ski-clad R4D, the military version of a Douglas DC-3 airliner, off an aircraft carrier, taking it hundreds of miles over the ice to reach Little America, the Navy's makeshift exploration base on the Ross Ice Shelf. Commander Shinn lived on the ice for about a month, sleeping in a tent — designed more for the tropics than the Antarctic — and flying photographic missions that were intended to help map the continent. At the end of his tour, he was picked up by an icebreaker and joined the command ship of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who had made history in 1929 as the first person to fly over the South Pole. Commander Shinn accompanied the admiral on a triumphant voyage to the Washington Navy Yard, where Byrd shook hands with the secretary of the Navy and presented the National Zoo with a gift of two-dozen penguins. (When a crate burst open during unloading, three of the birds disappeared into the Anacostia River.) By 1956, Commander Shinn had returned to Antarctica as part of Operation Deep Freeze, a Navy mission that was launched in support of the International Geophysical Year, a collaborative effort promoting scientific research at the poles and elsewhere around the world. This time he lived in comparative luxury at McMurdo Sound, in a heated Quonset hut instead of a tent. Still, he noted that the solitude of the Antarctic could take a toll — 'people get angry with one another; there were a few mental cases' — and that even with his experience navigating high winds and whiteout conditions, the risks of polar aviation remained high. Advertisement During an exploratory flight near the Beardmore Glacier, his airplane was caught in a wind shear and 'fell out of the sky,' hurtling toward the ground before Commander Shinn turned to a rocket system known as JATO, for jet-assisted take-off, in which rockets are fired to provide additional thrust. 'The wing rolled and the wingtip touched the ice. I'm sure it added to the deafening blast of the JATO firing,' he said in the oral history. 'We were close enough to the surface to send up a huge balloon of ice crystals. The passengers must have been terrified. But we flew out.' Commander Shinn turned to the JATO system once again during his historic flight to the South Pole, aboard a propeller-driven R4D-5L named Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), after the newly released Doris Day pop song. The plane carried seven passengers and crew members, including Rear Admiral George J. Dufek, who stepped outside and planted an American flag into the ice. (Technically, they had landed about four miles from the geographical South Pole. Observers deemed it close enough.) The group set up a metal radar reflector, intended to help future pilots make their way to the site, and spent about 45 minutes outside before readying for takeoff. Commander Shinn was already prepared for a difficult departure by virtue of the pole's altitude, at more than 9,000 feet. But he was surprised to discover that while the plane's engines were running, the snow under its skis had melted and refrozen. Advertisement They were stuck. 'We just sat on the ice like an old mud hen,' he told the Associated Press in 1999. Overheard was an Air Force cargo plane, assigned to hang close and drop supplies in case of disaster. It wasn't needed: Commander Shinn was able to free the plane by firing JATO bottles, four at a time, enabling the Que Sera Sera to break loose and, at full throttle, take off — just barely. Commander Shinn and his crew flew through 'a cloud of ice,' using their instruments to navigate while unable to see out of the cockpit, before making their way back to base at McMurdo, some 800 miles away. After landing, his colleague John P. Strider downplayed their difficulties at the pole, joking to a reporter that he dealt with only one problem on the flight: 'My coffee wouldn't percolate at 12,000 feet.' As a result of the mission, Commander Shinn was awarded the Legion of Merit. Antarctica's third-highest peak, Mount Shinn, was named in his honor. 'I had been lucky,' he said in the oral history, looking back on his flying days in the Antarctic. 'Lucky — that's what I would call it.' The second of six children, Conrad Selwyn Shinn was born in Leaksville, N.C. — a mill town that is now part of the city of Eden — on Sept. 12, 1922. His father served in the infantry during World War I and worked as a YMCA secretary; his mother managed the home. As a boy, he idolized Charles Lindbergh and Wiley Post, pilot heroes of the golden age of aviation. His high school yearbook, which he edited, seemed almost prophetic in its title: The Pilot. Advertisement Commander Shinn graduated at age 16, first in his class, and studied aeronautical engineering at North Carolina State College, now a university. He enrolled in a civilian pilot training program, left school to join the Navy in 1942, and received his commission the next year. After World War II, he married Gloria Carter, with whom he had three children: David, Connie, and Diane Shinn. They divorced in 1954. Commander Shinn retired from the Navy in 1963 and settled in Pensacola, where he had been stationed. For years, he made regular visits to the National Naval Aviation Museum, where he was able to visit his restored former plane, the Que Sera Sera, and tell visitors about his flying days. Long after he retired, he continued to dress in military-style flight suits, preferring to avoid fussing over questions of personal appearance and style, according to his family. He remained especially concerned with safety issues, a theme dating back to his Navy days: If he couldn't sit in the pilot's seat as a civilian, he refused to fly at all, preferring to maintain control over maintenance and safety procedures. 'He always had the military demeanor,' his son David said, 'with one dramatic exception. While living in Florida, he developed the moniker Cat Man of La Rua,' after the street where he lived. 'He always had a dozen or two-dozen cats in residence. They'd come to his door, having heard about town that there was this man who would take care of them if he needed help.' Commander Shinn lived in the city until shortly before his death, at a nursing facility in Charlotte. His son confirmed the death but did not cite a specific cause. Survivors include his three children; a sister; a grandson; a great-grandson; and several of his cats, which he re-homed late in life. Asked in the oral history what he was proudest of from his time in the Antarctic, Commander Shinn replied: 'I would guess if I were going to have a tombstone I would put on it, 'He tells it like it is.' There's just no substitute for honesty and integrity.'
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
SpaceX readies private launch of four astronauts to International Space Station
Four crew members are set to launch Wednesday on a privately funded mission to the International Space Station. The flight, organized by the Houston-based company Axiom Space, is slated to lift off at 8 a.m. ET from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The foursome will journey into orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. NASA will broadcast live coverage of the launch beginning at 7:05 a.m. ET on NASA+. The flight was scheduled to launch Tuesday but high winds along the Florida coast forced a one-day delay. The mission, known as Ax-4, is expected to last about two weeks at the International Space Station. The mission will be led by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has already logged a record 675 days in space — more than any other American astronaut. Joining her will be pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, an astronaut with the Indian Space Research Organization; mission specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, a Polish scientist with the European Space Agency; and mission specialist Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer from Hungary. Shukla, Uznański-Wiśniewski and Kapu will make history by becoming the first people from their countries to live and work on the International Space Station. During their two-week stay at the orbiting lab, the Ax-4 crew members will conduct a host of scientific experiments, according to NASA, including studies of muscle regeneration, how sprouts and edible microalgae grow in microgravity and how tiny aquatic organisms survive at the ISS. If the launch goes according to plan, the four astronauts will dock at the space station on Thursday at around 12:30 p.m. ET. The upcoming flight will be Axiom Space's fourth crewed mission to the International Space Station. The company's first private expedition to the ISS was in 2022 with an all-civilian crew. The price tag for the Ax-4 mission has not been publicly disclosed, but space tourists reportedly paid around $55 million per seat on previous Axiom Space expeditions. This article was originally published on
New York Post
7 hours ago
- New York Post
Controversial researchers claim second ‘hidden city' found beneath Egypt's pyramids: report
The researchers who claimed to have found a vast underground city beneath Egypt's Great Pyramids doubled down on the wild theory Tuesday by saying they've found a second 'hidden city.' Italian and Scottish scientists studying the pyramid of Khafre say their radar system has uncovered another subterranean complex linking the structure to the Khufu and Menkaur pyramids, as well as the Great Sphinx, the Daily Mail reported. Filippo Biondi, a radar expert from Scotland's University of Strathclyde, claimed there was a 90% chance that the structures were connected — despite the research being lambasted by experts who slammed the findings as 'fake' and utterly lacking in scientific basis. Advertisement 4 A team of researchers believe they've found two underground cities connecting the Great Pyramids of Giza. 4 The team claims a layout of the land and radar scan reveal massive, vertical shafts beneath the pyramids. Khafre Project 'We firmly believe that the Giza structures are interconnected, reinforcing our view that the pyramids are merely the tip of the iceberg of a colossal underground infrastructural complex,' Biondi told the Mail. The team's research, which has yet to be peer-reviewed or published in any scientific journal, made waves back in March when they claimed to have found 2,000-foot-long vertical shafts underneath the Khafre pyramid. Advertisement The scientists still haven't presented a purpose for what the structures were used for, only speculating that they were built by a lost ancient civilization around 38,000 years ago. Egypt's three Great Pyramids, however, were only built around 4,500 years ago. 4 The research connects with a theory that an ancient civilization existed beneath the wonders of the world. Khafre Project Advertisement The scientists also claim they made the discoveries using satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology, which led Dr. Zahi Hawass, a renowned archaeologist and Egypt's former minister of antiquities, to slam the whole research as 'bulls–t.' SAR technology can only penetrate the ground by at most 10 inches, which would make it impossible for researchers to find data on shafts 2,000 feet below ground, Hawass and other experts explained. 'The claim of using radar inside the pyramid is false, and the techniques employed are neither scientifically approved nor validated,' he told the National, slamming the project as 'fake news.' 4 Egypt's pyramids remain a fascination for many around the world. REUTERS Advertisement Despite the scientific consensus, the team's research has reignited interests in ancient Egypt and speculation that there are still many secrets waiting to be uncovered under the sands. Fanatics of ancient Egypt continue to search for the fabled Hall of Records, a hidden library believed to be underneath the pyramid complex or the Great Sphinx containing resources of information about the ancient people. The rumor originated from self-proclaimed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, an American who claimed in the 1930s that refugees from Atlantis built the library to preserve their history.
