John Stapp & Rocket Sleds: "Space Age Railroad" 1968 US Air Force; Holloman AFB High Speed Test Track

more at http://quickfound.net/

TELLS THE STORY OF HIGH SPEED TEST TRACK, A RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FACILITY AT HOLLOMAN AFB, NM. HIGHLIGHTS ADVANCEMENTS SINCE FIRST TRACK RUN IN 1950. ILLUSTRATES MONORAIL RUNS AND EXPLAINS PRINCIPAL BRAKING SYSTEMS. INTRODUCES UNIQUE TRACK FEATURES AND EXPLAINS SCOPE AND VERSATILITY. SHOWS MASS OF ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT USED TO PROVIDE DATA. DEPICTS INSTRUMENTATION SETUP INVOLVING USE OF OPTICAL SYSTEMS. EXPLAINS PHYSICAL LAYOUT OF AREA.

USAF film SFP-1650

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Colonel John Paul Stapp (July 11, 1910 – November 13, 1999), M.D., Ph.D., was an American career U.S. Air Force officer, flight surgeon, physician, biophysicist, and pioneer in studying the effects of acceleration and deceleration forces on humans. He was a colleague and contemporary of Chuck Yeager, and became known as "the fastest man on earth". His work on Project Manhigh pioneered many developments for the US space program...

Born in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, Stapp was the eldest of four sons of Reverend and Mrs. Charles F. Stapp, Baptist missionaries. He studied in Texas at Brownwood High School in Brownwood and San Marcos Baptist Academy in San Marcos.

In 1931, Stapp received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University in Waco, an MA from Baylor in 1932, a PhD in Biophysics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1940, and an MD from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 1944. He interned for one year at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota...

Stapp entered the U.S. Army Air Corps on 5 October 1944 as a physician and qualified as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Army Air Forces. On 10 August 1946, he was assigned to the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright Field as a project officer and medical consultant in the Biophysics Branch and transferred to the U.S. Air Force when it became an independent service in September 1947. His first assignment included a series of flights testing various oxygen systems in unpressurized aircraft at 40,000 ft (12.2 km). One of the major problems with high-altitude flight was the danger of "the bends" or decompression sickness. Stapp's work resolved that problem as well as many others, which allowed the next generation of high-altitude aircraft and the HALO insertion techniques. He was assigned to the deceleration project in March 1947.

In 1967, the Air Force loaned Stapp to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to conduct auto-safety research. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1970 with the rank of colonel.

Work on effects of deceleration

As early as 1945, service personnel realized the need for a comprehensive and controlled series of studies into the effects of deceleration on the human body. This led to fundamental concepts that could be applied to better safeguard aircraft occupants during a crash. The initial phase of the program, as set up by the Aero Medical Laboratory of the Wright Air Development Center, was to develop equipment and instrumentation...

The first run on the rocket sled took place on 30 April 1947 with ballast. The sled ran off the tracks. The first human run took place the following December. Instrumentation on all the early runs was in the developmental stage, and it was not until August 1948 that it was adequate to begin recording. By August 1948, sixteen human runs had completed, all in the backward-facing position. Forward-facing runs started in August 1949...

By June 8, 1951, a total of 74 human runs had been made on the decelerator, 19 with the subjects in the backward position, and 55 in the forward position. Stapp, one of the most frequent volunteers on the runs, sustained a fracture of his right wrist during the runs on two separate occasions, also broke ribs, lost fillings from his teeth and bleeding into his retinas that caused temporary vision loss; in one run he survived forces up to 38 g...

By riding the decelerator sled, in his 29th and last ride at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Stapp demonstrated that a human can withstand at least 46.2 g (in the forward position, with adequate harnessing). This is the highest known acceleration voluntarily encountered by a human, set on December 10, 1954. Stapp reached a speed of 632 mph (1,017 km/h) which broke the land speed record and made him the fastest man on Earth...