Word: sleds
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Force hopes to solve the problems with a high-speed, ground-borne "airplane": a rocket-propelled sled. Built with the help of Northrop Aircraft, Inc., it roars along a two-mile section of track at Edwards (formerly Muroc) Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. To eliminate jolts, the rails were laid at night so that heat waves would not upset the sighting instruments...
...Force men estimate that five rockets with 11,000 lbs. of thrust each will push the sled at 1,100 m.p.h. Other rockets firing forward bring it to a standstill...
...When the sled has reached the speed the testers want, the escape device in the simulated cockpit ejects a dummy pilot. Movie cameras record what happens to it (see cut), and the testers figure out later whether a live pilot would miss the tail surfaces of a real airplane and live to parachute to earth...