The Rocket Sled Trials of Colonel John Stapp

today's episode of the history guide brought to you by nordvpn [Applause] if you're a medical doctor and you enlist in the military you might figure there's a lot of things you might do i mean by its very nature the military does things that requires the assistance of a doctor but strapping yourself into a gizmo called a rocket sled in order to test the quote highest known acceleration voluntarily encountered by a human unquote or say flying in a military jet with the canopy off just to see how much the wind hurts your face might not be what you expect in his extraordinary career colonel john paul staff phd md did a lot of downright crazy things with a single goal in mind to save lives it is history that deserves to be remembered and talk about crazy who would surf the internet today without a vpn face it we surf all over the place today and not every network is secured history deserves to be remembered but that doesn't mean that you want some scammer spying on your browsing history 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doctor who that aren't on netflix in the united states and nordvpn is crazy easy to use it's got a simple user-friendly chrome browser extension it's got ios and android apps it's got 24 7 customer support and a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee so take control of your internet today go to nordvpn the history guy that's nordvpn.com the history guide to get a two-year plan plus an additional month at a huge discount john stapp was born in brazil in july 1910 to missionary parents when he enrolled at baylor university in 1927 he originally intended to be a writer but witnessing an accident that killed his two-year-old cousin in 1928 convinced him to become a doctor he later wrote it was the first time i'd seen anyone die i decided right there and then that i wanted to be a doctor as a result he earned a master's degree in zoology at baylor followed by a phd in biophysics from the university of texas and then earned his md from the university of minnesota twin cities in 1944 after his internship he enlisted in the u.s army medical corps qualifying as a flight surgeon and in august 1946 the first lieutenant was assigned to the aero medical laboratory at wright field in dayton ohio staff's first assignment was flight testing oxygen systems in high altitude aircraft an assignment that had implying many hours in an unpressurized stripped down and modified b-17 at altitudes as high as 45 thousand feet the future of aviation depended upon answering important questions about whether humans could survive and function while flying at very high altitudes among many problems was that the crews could suffer from decompression sickness otherwise known as the bends while usually associated with depressurization from underwater diving the condition can also arise from flying at high altitudes in depressurized aircraft even if the crew were using oxygen decompression sickness is the condition arising from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurization the condition could result in extreme pain in the joints as well as confusion visual abnormalities dizziness headache and in rare cases unconsciousness all of these could result in fatal accidents for pilots step was able to resolve the problem discovering that breathing pure oxygen for 30 minutes prior to flying avoided the symptoms the solutions he developed allowed the next generation of high altitude aircraft that would eventually aid in the development of pressurized suits aircraft ejection systems and equipment and methods for successful high-altitude military parachuting or halo after the successful conclusion of his project in 1947 staff was placed in charge of another aeromedical problem the problem of deceleration according to popular science magazine in september 2014 staff's interest was first peak when he witnessed ejection seat tests in 1946 at right field ejecting from an aircraft particularly as aircraft technology was allowing greater speeds and altitudes raised biomedical questions as popular science notes a pilot bailing out of his aircraft at high speed and high altitude would be hit with a blast of wind and a load of g-forces in an article published by the u.s air force's air education training command in december 2019 lieutenant colonel matt roten of the 846 test squadron explains the need for this kind of work was stark and underappreciated in the 1950s one out of every four pilots who ejected from an aircraft was killed in the event additionally many pilots who did not have ejection seats were dying in crashes they should have been able to survive martin varshall of charles river analytics noted in the 2004 article in researchgate that throughout the second world war aircraft engineers and designers decided that humans could survive at a maximum of 18g airplane cockpits then were all designed to withstand 18g impacts because if the person was already dead why invest in stronger materials and structural support but staff noticed from crash records that there were pilots who survived high-speed impacts that would have subjected them to more than 18 g's and where the assumptions of physics had they should have died whereas other pilots were dying in lower magnitude crashes where at least in theory should have survived marshall continues it became snap's theory that in many of these cases the pilots probably survived the impact however the seats harnesses and cockpits around them did not and were the real killers staff was convinced that it could produce a safer set of standards later writing one factor is encouraging there are only two models male and female of the human body currently available with no immediate prospects of a new design any finding in this research should provide permanent standards staff chose to conduct his research at a dry lake at murdoch army airfield now edwards air force base in california nick t spark contributing editor to wings and air power magazine explains that remote base was about as far as you could get from right field but a key component was already in place there a two thousand foot long rocket sled track built during world war ii for tests of nazi v1 buzz bombs the track had a hydraulic braking system installed that would cause the sled to decelerate very quickly simulating the g-forces experienced in an airplane crash while the initial assumption was that all testing would be using a non-human subject that is a crash test dummy named oscar 8 ball staff concluded the test must be done with live subjects a job for which he volunteered himself much like his research in high altitude aircraft he chose to be a guinea pig for his own research the smithsonian air and space museum explained in august 2018 few safety guidelines and standards existed as aircraft performance and speed rapidly advanced staff wanted to understand human responses to acceleration deceleration and wind blast to improve pilot safety especially in cases of ejection from disabled aircraft he pioneered and put a human face to the new field of aeromedicine explaining his decision to participate in live tasks stapp wrote i have the missionary spirit when asked to do something i do it i took my risk for information that will always be a benefit risks like that are worthwhile the sled was accelerated using jato short for jet assisted takeoff rockets designed to help overloaded aircraft get in the air the acceleration and thus deceleration could be varied by the number of jto rockets attached to the sled called g-whiz staff's entry into the national aviation hall of fame explains the sled named the g-whiz and powered by jado rockets glided on a 2000 foot long track and had a very effective braking system staff planned a series of tests on humans and set out to develop a harness to hold them to the sled first however he used a dummy named oscar 8-ball to perfect the harness finally after 32 sled runs he was ready to test it on human beings it proved of course to be a dangerous undertaking spark described one of the experiments at one point to learn more about what they might be up against oscar 8 ball was sent down the track at 150 miles per hour wearing only a light safety belt at the end of the run the brakes locked up instantly producing 30 g's the belt nearly parted an oscar in meek obedience to newton's second law of motion sally forth he went right through an instinct wooden windscreen as if it were paper left his rubber face behind and finally came to a halt 710 feet down range clearly some damnable forces of physics were at work while there were other volunteers stapp insisted that he be the subject of the most dangerous experiments as a flight surgeon he was uniquely prepared to be able to note the physiological effects a post on the edwards air force base website described one run on june 1st 1951 air force air medical researcher major john stapp was strapped into a rocket sled that was poised on a 2000 foot deceleration track at north base moments later 4 000 pounds of rocket thrust blasted down the track and into the braking system from 88.6 miles per hour to a full stop in 18 feet for a brief instant he endured 48 g with a rate of onset of about 500 g per second in other words his body absorbed an impact more than four tons prior to steps sled experiments conventional medical wisdom had maintained that the human body could probably survive no more than 17 to 18 instantaneous a september 2014 article in popular science describes his efforts at murdoch by june 8 1951 volunteers have made 74 runs on the sled staff himself was one of the most frequent riders fracturing his wrist twice on more violent runs but the slanted edwards wasn't enough he wanted to try faster speeds and more violent decelerations an opportunity he got when he was transferred from murdoch to the holloman air force base in new mexico the holloman high speed test track or hhstt completed in august 1949 was 3 350 feet long more than 1300 feet longer than the track at murdoch staff's obituary published in the new york times described steph's experience there though begun to let other volunteers take many of the rides he suffered broken ribs hemorrhages in one eye a concussion an abdominal hernia a fractured tailbone and a shattered wrist but he took his most famous ride on december 10 1954 for the test that day steps 29th nine jato rockets accelerated him to 632 miles per hour would have been a land speed record although it's never been recognized by organizations that recognize such records his ride is considered to be the highest known acceleration voluntarily encountered by a human a post on the web page of wright-patterson air force base explains the sled was stopped in 1.4 seconds subjecting stat to 46.2 gs equivalent to hitting a brick wall at 50 miles per hour snap suffered bruising blisters and even temporary blindness he was an instant celebrity appearing on magazine covers and on television the air combat command web page notes stapp's record-breaking sled run was the final manned run in a series of wind blasts and a deceleration test designed to understand human tolerance to high-speed ejections from aircraft aside from the positive publicity the event garnered for the air force it more importantly brought international recognition to staff's mission to improve the safety of airmen and pilots as to how staff felt the new york times noted his reaction how did it feel it's like being assaulted in the rear by a fast freight train dr stapp said what did he think about as he listened to the countdown i said to myself paul it's been a good life in 1955 time magazine called him the fastest man on earth and number one hero of the air force although he did not seem to covet the attention and in 1984 told a newspaper that the only lasting effects of my experiments are all the lunches and dinners i have to go to stapp's work led to a number of life-saving advances from better strap systems for pilots and parachutes to better ejection seats to the understanding that the human body better withstands g-forces when facing backwards steps recommendation that airline seats be installed facing backwards is widely practiced in military transport planes but has been ignored by civilian airlines recognizing that the air force lost almost as many airmen to automobile accidents as it did plane crashes snap became an advocate who was instrumental in acting laws that required seat belts be installed in automobiles in may of 1955 he invited a number of experts from the armed services universities automobile manufacturers research laboratories traffic and safety councils and medicine to witness a sled demonstration and to participate in discussions on automotive design and safety features that would be the genesis of the annual step car crash conferences which continue to this day and according to their website are the premier forum for presentation of research in impact biomed mechanics human injury tolerance and related fields that advance the knowledge of land vehicle crash injury protection one surprising result of staff's work had to do with an air force officer an aeronautical engineer on his team named edward a murphy junior when murphy accidentally installed some testing equipment backwards reading one of their tests useless stap went into a press conference and quoted a previously unknown law called murphy's law which briefly stated means anything that can go wrong will now in the context of what staff was talking about it meant that engineers had to plan for all eventualities including worst case scenarios but it's made the popular lexicon although murphy himself was said to be annoyed at the way that popular culture has trivialized the concept in a related note staff created another axiom called staph's law which states the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle later staff was involved in high-altitude balloon experiments testing human endurance on the edge of space when nasa needed to pick its first seven astronauts it used the physical test designed by stap to select the mercury 7. over his lifetime colonel stapp would receive numerous awards and accolades but his legacy is really fairly simple as the newspaper of the day of new london connecticut noted in 1984 he dreamed of saving lives and decades later he's credited with exactly that saving hundreds of thousands of lives colonel john paul stapp once the fastest man on earth passed away in november of 1999 the age of 89. i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guys where snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy it please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comments section i will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guide on facebook instagram twitter and check out our 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 100,038

Rating: 4.9776425 out of 5

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, John Paul Stapp, rocket sled, aviation, fastest man, us history

Id: JHGJ_y4aJII

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021