Big G wrote:

(Marc Reeve) wrote in news:1fyin86.1brigrr3cte24N%
:

Hmmh, come again Marc? about the 'Col Stapp' and face-distorted glory..'
whats that mean? I met and chatted with an SR71 driver once for about an
hour at Mildenhall, England. His face was disfigured from some kind of
burns incident, would that be the face-distortion you're talking about?
This guy knew his Blackbird very well indeed.

Col. John Stapp was a pioneer in the US in aerospace medical research.
His rocket sled research included a 48g deceleration, resulting in well
known (at least in the US) pictures of Col. Stapp's seriously
g-distorted face.

"During the interval from 1946 through 1958, Colonel Stapp pioneered in
research on the effects of mechanical force on living tissues. In the
course of these investigations, a quantitative stress analysis of the
human body to limits of voluntary tolerance of crash type impacts and
decelerations. These dynamic stress analyses, including 76 human
experiments with rocket sleds decelerated from aircraft crash
velocities, over 200 experiments with human volunteers on swings,
catapults and other decelerating devices, provide criteria for aircraft
and ground vehicle safety design; for tolerance limits of trajectories
of ejection seats and escape capsules for supersonic and hypersonic; and
basic data applicable to impact forces expected in space ballistic
flight.

Simultaneously, effects of windblast were studied, both by exposure of
volunteers on high speed rocket sleds and in jet aircraft flights with
canopy removed. As a volunteer for 29 of the rocket sled deceleration
and windblast experiments, Colonel Stapp sustained decelerations of 25 g
average and 40 g peaks during a stop in 1.4 seconds from a velocity of
632 miles per hour attained by a rocket sled in 1954, in the last
experiment of this series. Colonel Stapp has not sustained loss of
consciousness nor permanent disability from any of these experiments,
although he incurred two wrist fractures, rib fractures, retinal
hemorrhages and lesser injuries at various times. Establishment of human
tolerance limits to impact forces in the order of 10,000 lbs. for
durations of a quarter of a second or less, and findings on the
quantitative relationship of the rate on onset of mechanical force to
injurious and lethal effects were worth the hazard of these
experiments."
- http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/afp/afp1199.htm

The search "+stapp +rocket +sleds" prodices about 70 results and
provides lots more background for those interested.

Stephen