Word: sled
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...addition, the planes also needed new methods to test them, since they fly in a world where things happen so fast that human reactions are woefully slow. At Edwards Air Force Base in California, all structural parts are first checked out on a Mach 3 (2,280 m.p.h.) rocket sled to make sure that they will stand up under supersonic stresses. When North American's first F-100s developed tail flutter at speeds above Mach 1, engineers grounded all planes, experimented with a tail attached to a rocket sled. They drove the sled until the tail disintegrated, found where...
...Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer of the Lincoln family, the White House was a huge rumpus room. They found the central bell system and sent the White House staff scurrying up and down stairs in a dither over the President's safety. The "dear codgers" built a sled in the attic out of an old chair, with a copy of the Congressional Record for a seat, and improvised snow flurries from a binful of visiting cards left by guests...
Besides these hard-shelled projects. Holloman also works with all-too-soft human flesh. The famed Space Surgeon John Paul Stapp (TIME, Sept. 12) speeds across the desert on his rocket sled to see how much strain the human body can stand. Another Holloman specialty is radio-controlled drone aircraft, which are used as targets and as a means of improving missile guidance systems. Perhaps the most picturesque program is "space biology," which includes sending living organisms (bacteria to monkeys) up to the edge of space in rockets. The condition in which they return to earth gives some idea...
...Stapp's stern parents and his obviously masochistic choice of career [Sept. 12]. The religiously strict father, and the mother who "tried to strap the unruly youngster in bed," surely drove him to rebel (in pursuit of scientific studies), but later to conform, strapping himself into the rocket sled in death-bent compensation. The many protective straps that he has invented, as well as other devices, show a fortunate outcome of an emotionally unhealthy childhood...
...people-including his brother Celso, also a physician-are urging Stapp to quit. They fear that, while he may pull out of each ride successfully, the cumulative damage to his system may be dangerous. Stapp pooh-poohs such talk, is determined to go on riding his rocket sled. He knows that what he is learning by pressing to the edge of inhuman endurance will hold true even when today's planes are in the museums and tomorrow's speeds have dwindled to slow-motion space crawling...