Word: sled
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...Force, with supersonic craft already in the air, has not lost its taste or its need for high-speed derring-do. At Holloman Air Force Base, N.Mex., is a menacing contraption: a rocket-propelled sled that travels on railroad rails at 750 m.p.h. As an additional attraction, the passenger sits in a chair that tumbles over and over 180 times a minute. The rig is designed to simulate the air pressure and violent rotation encountered by a pilot who bails out of a fighter plane at the peak of its speed...
...week long bobsledders from seven nations-Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Italy and the U.S.-crackled down Cortina's precipitous run with ever-increasing speed. "Bobbing" (i.e., swinging and swaying) in unison to get the last watch-tick of speed from the razor-sharp sled runners, the sledders had knocked an impossible 4.6 seconds off the Cortina record: from 1:24.34 for the mile-long run down to 1:19.74. When the championship heats began, it was Feierabend's red sled, with the white Swiss cross on its cowling, that held the course record...
Feierabend's sled was the next to last to start. Carefully, for luck, he touched each blade-then the Swiss were off. Using Feierabend's simple formula-"Hug the curves high and develop speed, like a dive bomber"-the Swiss sled was soon hitting 80 m.p.h. It spun through a series of labyrinth curves, down an ice-coated chute into famed Crystal Curve (where 24 sleds cracked up in 1950), then whipped across the finish line in a wild flurry of snow as the brakeman pulled to a stop. The announced time brought a roar from the crowd...
Champion G-survivor, so far, is Lieut. Colonel John P. Stapp, a husky flight surgeon whose sled rocketed at 175 m.p.h. before being braked. He was strapped facing backward in a specially built seat, which is what saved him. He took 46.8 Gs for .008 seconds (equivalent to running an automobile into a solid brick wall at 120 m.p.h.). His body at the moment of impact weighed close to four tons, and his blood was more than three times as heavy as mercury...
Practical Results. Colonel Flickinger believes that human tolerance might be increased to 90 or 100 Gs if the passenger took the impact lying transversely to the sled's motion on a properly contoured support. But he does not believe that this experiment will be tried soon. "It is not possible," he says, "to build that much tolerance into the hardware...