check out this amazing article i found on autospeed..
this crazy dude subjected himself to ungodly g-forces back in the 50's to test the limits of human endurance.. and lived to tell the tale.

http://us1.webpublications.com.au/static/images/articles/i1098/109806_7mg.jpg

As his own volunteer subject, the colonel became known as the world's fastest man when on December 10, 1954, he took a bone-and-tissue-punishing 839-metre sled ride at Holloman Air Force Base in the US. In less than a tenth of a second, rockets on back of the sled sent the vehicle at 19 g’s with more than 18,000kg of thrust. Stapp's ride hit 1018 km/h - nearly supersonic speeds - before coming to a dead stop in 1.4 seconds, pushing him to 40 g’s. And, for an instant, his 76kg body weighed over 3 tonnes.

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/A_109806/article.html

he's got my vote for president.

he's one hardcore nigga.

faaaaark, I'm surprised that he lived.

infi is racist, b&

also, hardcore
this guy has earnt my man up award for the day

oh i was using nigga in the street sense, being interchangeable with "playa" or "gangsta".

I assume the dude was some wonderbread honkie given its the 1950's military.

the really cool thing about this project is that it was the very project on which an engineer known as Murphy worked. if your wondering why that's special.. just think of Murhpy's law :) and btw, the project wasn't about breaking any land speed records but to test the effects of sudden deceleration on the human body..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law

In the winter of 1976-77 Purley commissioned designer Mike Pilbeam to build a Lec F1 car and with the help of Mike Earle this was ready to race in 1977. Purley qualified for several races but in practice at Silverstone suffered a stuck throttle and crashed with incredible violence. Purley was subjected to the highest G-forces ever survived by a human being - 179.8G - when the car went from 108mph to zero in just over half a meter. His life was saved by rescue crews at the scene of the crash but it took many months for him to recover from multiple fractures to his legs, pelvis and ribs. He did eventually have a second Lec F1 car built and did one or two events. In 1979 he raced in the British F1 series with a Shadow but then he quit racing and turned instead to running the family business and aerobatics. He had been a pilot since the early 1960s but while flying off the south coast of England in the summer of 1985 he crashed into the sea in his Pitts Special stunt plane.

last edited by nF at 18:22:45 19/Mar/08

180 g vs 19g?! Crazy!

yeah that colonel is soft as cakes imo

like they say, it's not the speed - it's the sudden stop at the end

I'd say the entire team are heroes and pioneers, it was their research into g - forces that revolutionized the aeronautics industry by changing common wisdom and proving that pilots could survive at mach 1 and above, without the knowledge that the team gained and the success of the experiments, chuck yager's record flight in the bell x1 would never have been possible.

Meh, I am more amazed by:

Project Excelsior was a series of high-altitude parachute jumps made by Captain (later Colonel) Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force in 1959 and 1960 to test the Beaupre multi-stage parachute system. In one of these jumps Kittinger set world records for the highest parachute jump, the longest parachute freefall and the fastest freefall, all of which still stand (as of 2008).

(Wikipedia Entry)

His highest altitude jump was about 30km!



last edited by parabol at 19:15:06 19/Mar/08

bloody hell. i didn't think it was possible to live through something like that

Hmm yeah. the cool thing about that is that he fell faster in the vacuum.. and actually slowed down when the air pressure increased.. was interesting.. there is a guy trying to scrape together funding to try and break kittinger's record. i think he wants to jump later this year.

that video is mind blowing. imagine stepping off that platform from outside the atmosphere! %#$#$%$%^@

jesus f***ing christ!

that would be one of the scariest things ever doing that jump

would be fun

Joseph Kittinger

Actually if I recalled correctly, he's technically the first man to go into outer space because of the altitude he was at. I got the BBC Planets DVD, and he was in one of the ep. f***ing awesome DVDs set highly recommend it.