Do you guys know who Colonel Stapp is?

[Hodgo88]

If not, mind sparing me 58 seconds to learn about someone I find both fascinating and historically significant?



Before we had advanced dummies and computer simulations, we had guys like Colonel John Stapp who would strap themselves to rocket sleds to test the effects of deceleration. In his final test run (he did it dozens of times) he exceeded 630mph and over 40g's.

He once said he would practice getting dressed in the dark, in case his eyes popped out of his skull during G-force testing so he wouldn't be rendered helpless.

 

[BigDaddyLH]

What a resume! "Human Test Dummy"

 

[getbent]

well, that is pretty cool.... but he's no colonel robert morris.

 

[HappyMangle]

Thanks for sharing! Didn't know any of that. There is a lot if information for me in one day, just found this article about different translation services https://translationreport.com/top-10-trаnslation-services and going to make a first order from one of them tomorrow. If everything works well, that will be a huge relief for me and i will get rid of huge piece of work.

 

[Timbresmith1]

No, but I try to avoid getting his infection…

 

[Tarkus60]

I have watched that video before.
Dude had balls of steel for sure!!!!!!

 

[Tarkus60]

And this guy

 

[JSMac]

Helmets and goggles are for sissies.

 

[radtz]

And this guy

Was that part of the Man High project stuff?

 

[RodeoTex]

My old friend and mentor Dean worked on all those sled runs in electronics (vacuum tube) and telemetry. He told me many stories of the sled runs and Col. Stapp.
The people and orangutan stories were great.
Each of those steel rails were cast in place in ONE piece at ONE time. They are something like 7 miles long, can't remember now. They grew in length by several feet each day in the New Mexico sun. All the techs would drive to the end most mornings and make their marks on the cement pad as to how long it would be later. Loser had to buy cokes.
I wish he'd written all this stuff down
He had a plaque with a 1/16" inch piece of the track mounted on it. His widow has no idea where it went.
I have since found this, I'd love to watch it with him.
Sorry for

Sorry for the word fit...

 

[Hodgo88]

If you have any more stories you can share, I would be thrilled to hear them.

Also, how amazing is it that you post something like this on TDPRI and within half a day somebody with two degrees of separation posts?

 

[Killing Floor]

He literally made a career out of double dog dares.

 

[MarkieMark]

Awesome memories.
A hero of my childhood.

I always wished to become a crash test dummy.
Derned electronics ruined it for me.

 

[RodeoTex]

For you @Hodgo88 :
Many sled tests were done with chimpanzees, not orangutans as I said earlier.
Since the primates can't speak for themselves, multi-pin Canon connectors were installed on their skull with probes within their brains to record ~something~.
More humane than operating to insert the probes each time the animal made a run.
Chimpanzees, being very social and cleanly animals, would help groom each other, paying special attention to the Canon connector. Worked out well.
Of course when a chimpanzees got loose in the hallway it was terrifying since they are a strong as about ten men.
But it was found that they are deathly afraid of CO2 fire extinguishers. Then they showed their ability to operate doorknobs and get themselves into their own cages.
There was a lot of fire extinguishers around...
Airmen could make extra pay by riding the sled sometimes. All their vitals were monitored and they got sent down the track to get the crap knocked out of them. Later on they called for volunteers, monitoring their vitals just to learn their pre-run physiology, then release them with no run at all.
This created quite a quandary among Airmen gambling to make some extra money since they didn't know if they were going or not.
Sometimes they built cinder block walls across the track. High speed cameras recorded the sled crashing through. SloMo review showed a near perfect sled- shaped hole for many frames then the fractures radiate in all directions and the wall explodes, but the sled is way down the track by then. Dents in the sled also happen in this fashion. Reason given was that though the object was hypersonic the resulting damage cannot travel faster than the speed of sound (I'm still struggling to understand that myself).

At the end of the planned run there were dividers between the tracks filled with various amounts of water. A scoop under the sled broke through the dividers and slowed the sled to any profile they needed.

There is an aromred front sled plate in their museum there that has the perfect imprint of a pigeon. Supposedly every feather and foot, everything pressed into the steel. I haven't seen it.

I think Stapp was mostly(?) gone by the time Dean was there but Werhner von Braun came there from time to time, but Dean never actually met him.

Again, I wish Dean had written all this down. He fancied himself a writer so this is the great irony.
Again, sorry for typing so much.

 

[trapdoor2]

I remember Stapp from old documentaries. Heroic.

Of course the last Indiana Jones movie had Harrison Ford riding the sled with an evil villan...

 

[Bob Womack]

On one of those runs Stapp ruptured all the blood vessels in his retinas making him temporarily blind. He fractured his wrists more than once.

Bob

 

[Peegoo]

Human physiology is a real problem when it comes to acceleration forces. It's a major limiting factor in a lot of new technology.

Stapp and his cohorts were little different from Dr. Jekyll: they sometimes drank potions in the course of their work that had unintended consequences. It's pretty damn heroic--in the name of advancing science and technology.

Me, on the other hand...