This also includes an episode on pre-astronauts.
These missions in some ways laid the platform for Project Mercury, which would come shortly after.
There were many more questions than answers back in the 1940s.
How high was too high for humans?
How would humans behave at high altitudes?
Was there a maximum speed the human body could bear?
Would cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere blind people?
Was there a boundary to how far one could fall?
Stapp is likely most well-known for his exploration of the question about g-forces.
However, how much could the human body stand?
to find out humans would react to such a harsh environment, Stapp started performing experiments.
Stapp did not believe in exposing others to such harsh conditions without going through it first.
Stapp finally recovered despite him losing vision for a time after this final extreme run down the track.
He had to continuously fight for financing.
This was trailed by other researchers into a territory above 99 percent of the Earths atmosphere.
The Soviet Union launched Sputnik into space in October 1957 shortly after Stapp and Kittingers feat.
How high could a human survive a jump from?
He landed safely some 13 minutes and 45 seconds later.
Gravity is a law, and I knew I was going to go down.
He understood that automobile safety was a large issue.
He appeared before Congress numerous times and suffered the ire of the Big Three automakers.
In fact, Detroit fought hard but they lost in the end.
He became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrations chief medical scientist.
Seat belts became standard equipment in US automobiles two years later.
The successors to Stapps earliest space men, humans landed on the Moon a year after that.
Resource :Ars Technica.
source: www.techworm.net
