Word: feet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Juniata McMichen, 19, of Atlanta, tried a variation of the scare technique. She took an hour-long ride in a stunting airplane, including a dive from 10,000 feet. It was her first plane ride and she was "almost scared to death." But it did no good; she climbed out hiccuping six a minute. Doctors finally cured her by crushing a phrenic nerve...
Passengers aboard a pressurized, transatlantic Constellation last year knew what Dr. Gelfan meant: at 19,000 feet, the astrodome had blown off, and with the release of the inside pressure the navigator had been shot out after it. Had the plane not been brought down quickly to a lower altitude, the passengers would soon have felt wobbly, slightly drunk, and would have lost consciousness in a few minutes. At 20,000 feet the pressure can be restored merely by diving, but at 40,000 feet an oxygen mask is needed. Above 52,000 feet, a new problem comes...
...experimenting with monkeys in specially constructed pressure chambers, Dr. Gelfan, an assistant professor of physiology, has learned that at 52,000 feet the barometric pressure of the air is so low that it is about equal to the pressure inside the tiny blood vessels of the lungs. Under such conditions, there is not enough pressure to force the oxygen through the walls of the blood vessels and into the bloodstream. Explained Dr. Gelfan: "At the moment of decompression . . . the pressure of oxygen in the blood would be greater than in the lungs, and under such circumstances oxygen is actually lost...
Decompression at such altitudes is in itself not fatal (monkeys have withstood it at 75,000 feet), provided the victim is returned almost immediately to a lower altitude. But humans black out in about 15 seconds, too little time for a pilot to descend to a tolerable altitude...
...feet, 18 miles away, Search Scope picked up a moving white dot. It was a C-47 from the U.S. Air Force's Berlin airlift. Carefully watching the calibrations which told him the plane's altitude, speed and distance, the G.I. at Search Scope called over his microphone to the pilot: "Calling Easy Charlie three nine ... You will descend 500 feet a minute ... Fly two five seven degrees...