The universe is governed by the laws of physics, and gravity is one of the most fundamental. But what happens when modern technology dares to test these forces? And what happens when the human body becomes the victim of our relentless quest to go faster than ever before?
This article will explore how a secret military project led to faster planes, safer cars and even helped us walk on the surface of the moon. Let's investigate how the fastest man on earth shook the US military with his gruesome brush with death, and how he lived to tell the tale.
G Force
Before we delve into the story of Colonel John Stapp, we need to understand G-Force. G-Force measures acceleration and deceleration, how much we speed up and slow down. 1G is the force it takes to keep your feet stuck on the ground, and each extra G multiplies that feeling of weight. So if you experienced 5G, that would produce the feeling of being crushed by 5 times your body weight.
If you experienced 10G, that would be the equivalent of being sat on by a manatee eating a bucket of pressed ham. And that’s a lot, accelerating to 100mph in a sports car only hits around 1.2G, and Formula 1 drivers get up to 4.5 Gs. G-Force is dangerous, and the human body didn't evolve to withstand it.
Exactly how dangerous depends on a range of factors: physical fitness, the duration and direction of movement, even posture. If you combine G-Force with vibration, even very low g-forces can kill or seriously injure you because of the damage it causes to internal organs. But if G force is so dangerous, how did Colonel John Stapp of the US Air Force survive 46Gs?
The Effects Of Extreme G-Forces On The Human Body
Imagine you’re in the Space shuttle, about to blast off on a voyage to discover new worlds. You’re sat on top of 383,000 litres of liquid hydrogen fuel. You blast off and the rockets explode beneath you, pushing you into the sky. As the g-forces build you’re pinned back into your seat and the cockpit rattles and shakes.
As the g-forces increase the blood drains away from your brain and pools in your feet and hands. This causes cerebral hypoxia as your brain stops getting the oxygen it needs. You feel euphoric, but the g-forces keep building and you quickly start slipping away.
The sensitive capillaries in your eyeballs are the first to be affected, the color drains from your vision and everything goes grey. In a matter of seconds tunnel vision sets in and then, total blackout. You go blind, and moments later fall into a state called gravitationally induced loss of consciousness, also known as
G-LOC. If you don’t regain consciousness soon, death follows very quickly.
Тренировка в центрифуге. Перегрузка в 7,6 G на лётчика. by Aleksei Petrovichev This is exactly what happens on the Euthanasia Coaster, a rollercoaster deliberately designed to kill its passengers with intense G-Forces. Designed by artist Julijonas Urbonas, this hypothetical ride is the “ultimate” rollercoaster, so extreme it “sends out 24 people and they all come back dead”. Its purpose is to kill humanely, and its designer claims it could “take lives with elegance and euphoria”. Passengers would climb up a steep incline, make a final yes or no decision at the top and then plummet 500 meters. Accelerating up to terminal velocity would subject them to 10Gs. If the rollercoaster stopped there, the passengers would probably survive, because the body can withstand high G forces for a brief period. But the coaster keeps going, pushing the body through seven smaller and smaller loops, each designed to keep body at 10Gs for a full minute. Passengers brains would be starved of oxygen, they would pass out and simply never wake up. The rollercoaster would stop, the corpses unloaded, and fresh riders strapped in.
HUMAN+ EUTHANASIA COASTER_JULIJONAS URBONAS by Science Gallery Dublin For now, the
Euthanasia Coaster is just an art project, a conceptual piece designed to ask questions of what the future might hold when life expectancies keep getting longer. But this white-knuckle death ride shows that 10Gs can be guaranteed to kill, so how did Colonel John Stapp survive 46? To answer that question, we must go back to the late 1940s, to a top-secret military testing facility in the deserts of New Mexico. It’s the start of Cold War, and the contest for global power between the USA and USSR is beginning to hot up. Both sides are frantically racing to develop better, faster aircraft that might just give them the edge if World War 3 broke out. As well as the threat of war, both superpowers were hungry for the biggest scientific prize there was, putting a man on the moon. That dream was still some way off, but both countries knew that the first to succeed would prove themselves to a world still choosing between 2 very different visions of the future.
John Paul Stapp: The Fastest Man On Earth
Enter John Stapp, a career United States Air Force officer, surgeon, physician and biophysicist. Stapp was a military man and scientist, who dreamt of building safer planes and contributing to the USA’s budding new space industry.
While a surgeon in the Air Force Medical Corps during World War 2, Stapp witnessed the horrific effects of countless plane crashes, and became convinced there was a pattern to how some men died and how some survived. He set himself the goal of finding out what this pattern was, and how he could use it to “eliminate unnecessary death” wherever he found it.Even before beginning work on the G-force program that would make him famous, Stapp volunteered to take part in dangerous experiments. One of which was to find out what would happen if an aircraft’s canopy was blown out in flight. To do so Stapp flew a fighter jet with no protective glass in the cockpit, blasting his face with winds of up to 570mph. The test was a success, and Stapp returned to base sore, but in one piece. But Stapp’s greatest and most dangerous work was yet to come.
In 1947 the US Air Force asked Stapp to begin a top-secret study into the effects of g-force on the body. They hoped the new information would help them improve the survival rate of US pilots, and give them a crucial advantage over the Russians. These experiments started slowly but quickly grew, becoming more and more dangerous. To simulate the effects of a plane crash, the US Air Force began strapping volunteers onto rocket-sleds and firing them along a strip of track in the desert before suddenly slamming on the brakes.
Rocket Sled "Sonic Wind No. 1" at White Sands by OkraJoe These high-speed deceleration tests could simulate the effects of crashing into a brick wall at speeds well over 500 miles per hour. Remember, this was a time before crash test dummies, and these kinds of tests relied on brave volunteers who were often seriously injured, sometimes even killed. As a hands-on scientist, Stapp always insisted on volunteering for test runs himself. And very soon, his research began to yield useful data. He discovered new ways of improving seat design and harnesses, and how the seating position of the pilot could affect the chances of survival in an emergency. But Stapp wasn’t satisfied, and was determined to push his experiments to the very limits of human tolerance.
Stapp’s commanding officer begged him to stop, as the risk of death climbed higher and higher. But Stapp continued in secret, increasing the speed of his test runs from 90 miles per hour to 150, then 200, then 300, and then higher still. Even in the early tests he suffered broken ribs, broken wrists and lost all his feelings. But still this wasn’t enough for Stapp. He knew modern fighter jets flew much faster, and he wanted to know what would happened to the body at even higher impact speeds. Soon Stapp was reaching over 400 miles per hour on his new rocket sled, Sonic Wind Number 1.
On December 10th 1954, Stapp climbed aboard his giant firework for what would be his final test run. This experiment was designed to simulate being ejected from a supersonic fighter jet, an incredibly dangerous feat that had never been attempted before. Wearing a special crash helmet, Stapp was tied into his seat. His hands were bound, and he stared at the track that stretched out before him into the dry heat of the New Mexico desert. The countdown began, and Stapp made a silent prayer. The rockets below him roared into life, punching Stapp along the track at ever-increasing speeds. The acceleration crushed him back into his seat with a force that could break bones and bend iron. Despite his new harness, the g-force sucked the blood from his brain and he began to blackout. For those few seconds Stapp earned the title of “the fastest man on Earth,” breaking ground speed records with an incredible 632 miles per hour. As he roared along the track, he experienced windblast equivalent to pilots bailing out of fighter jets at 1,000 miles an hour.
John Paul Stapp Fastest man on Earth - rocket sled Pilot safety equipment 1954 by PublicDomainFootage But Stapp’s experiment wasn’t over, and the worst was still to come. As Sonic Wind 1 reached the end of the track, the new liquid-braking system kicked in, sending a huge plume of water erupting from the back of his sled. As the brakes locked up Stapp jolted forward, his body straining against his harness. His lungs collapsed and his eyes bulged; his insides squashing like a tomato kicked against the side of a shed. Colonel Stapp had gone from near the speed of sound to a dead stop in a fraction of a second.Decelerating at that speed had never been done before, and witnesses looked on in horror. It was the equivalent of ejecting at Mach 1.6 at 40,000 feet; a shock more brutal than crashing into a brick wall at 120 miles per hour. The only difference between this and a high-speed car crash is this lasted nine times longer. In that moment, Stapp’s body endured a peak of 46g, an insane amount of force many times more than a lethal dose. And it had burst nearly every blood vessel in Stapp's eyeballs. The medics rushed over, and unstrapped the now limp Air Force Colonel from his rocket. Somehow, he had survived, but his eyes were two rolling black discs of blood. His skin too was covered in strange blisters. “I can’t see” he mumbled to the medics.
Miraculously, although his eyes had burst, his retinas had not been detached. So slowly, the blood drained away and his sight returned. Medics couldn’t find any major injury and soon gave him the all-clear. His commanding officer was also pleased to find him sat upright in his hospital bed only a day later, enjoying his lunch. Despite the horrific ordeal Stapp put his body through, his survival proved his theory about G-Force. With the right harnesses and preparation, it’s possible for the body to withstand the terrible effects of high-speed acceleration and deceleration. Because what kills you in a car or plane crash isn’t the G-Force, but the mangling effects of the impact.
Body Impact During Car Accident (Slow Motion) by Number Lokz Stapp’s survival proved that ejector seats were a viable technology, and his research solved many of the most pressing problems faced by the aerospace industry. Even after his time in the USAir Force, Stapp continued his work in a civilian role, designing safer cars that crumple in the right places and seats to reduce whiplash. His work also led to airbags and smarter crash test dummies, allowing mankind to travel faster and crash harder, without dying. Colonel John Stapp was honored as a hero, and the technologies he worked on have saved countless lives. The Air Force Chief of Staff called him “one of the bravest men in the world”, and awarded him several medals for his pioneering contributions to the USA’s successful development of high-speed travel.
I hope you were amazed at the story of John Stapp and the science behind G force. Thanks for reading!
