U.S. Air Force School Of Aviation Medicine

from the colleges and universities of the nation CBS television brings you the search the search to know and understand man and his worth asserts for a richer happier life for all chamber up her take us eight thousand please please Roger chamber going to 8,000 feet three thousand feet per minute I'm Charles Romine we're at the school of aviation medicine of the United States Air Force at Randolph field Texas we're going on a journey to the new frontiers of our planet to the boundaries of human travel into space this is Colonel Mike Sweeney director of research of the US Air Force school of aviation medicine Colonel Sweeney actually just what is aviation medicine how does it differ from other kinds of medicine in aviation medicine they're not only fighting the ordinary general diseases of mankind but something else in addition we are in a sense combating man's own accomplishments and that we are combating the resultant strains from man's ability to fly fast and high that is to say speed and lt today aviation design and engineering development have produced planes capable of carrying man to altitudes that the human body cannot tolerate finding man's limits tolerance to these strains and determining ways of protecting him in this unnatural environment that's a major factor in aviation medicine well how do you go about tackling this problem well one of the first things we had to do was develop some pretty accurate simulation simulators yes it is feasible to do all of your experimentation in flight therefore we recreate as many of the characteristics as possible in the laboratory and study them there this piece of equipment we've been looking at is a decompression chamber low pressure chamber now here in this decompression chamber we can create altitude conditions from ground level to a hundred thousand feet and the test you're going to see we will be subjecting this man to our sudden decompression that is a simulation of a structural failure pressure cabin we're going to see the effects of going from 40,000 feet to about 65,000 feet in a fraction of a second chamber level at 40,000 feet instruments cleared signal when ready okay father chamber level at sixty three thousand feet freefall us 30,000 feet list rider chamber free-falling 30,000 feet chamber level at 30,000 feet how do you feel okay this time take it down to ground level place Roger chamber going to ground level at 3,000 feet per minute how are your ears can you equalize the pressure here's okay flip it over get tenth off with Roger we do this test to acquaint the fire with what might happen to him in flight an emergency takes place after he's been through this test you know what to do automatically chamber 10,000 feet you can take off your mask now chamber ground level how did you find the mobility of your head Nick when the caps caps and pressure came on and after the decompression King Oh Colonel nyancy mobility is very free in your head magnitude very little restriction that's kind of a curious outfit you've got on tell me what's the purpose of this suit well the purpose of this suit is to allow your extreme pressures your breathing within your mask so when you're at high altitudes this is what takes care of it puts same kind of pressure all over it yes I see thanks very much without the pressure suit and helmet we just couldn't save the man's life well I've seen what altitude can do to the human body what about speed Colonel chick Henderson that right there development center are they working on all aspects of speed and acceleration can answer that problem Colonel Henderson what happens to the pilot when he's subjected to great speeds turns at high and supersonic speeds produce what we call g-force or acceleration a1 g-force is equal to the pull of the Earth's gravity two and three g's and so on are equal to two and three times that force only the faster and longer the motion goes on the more intense are its effects this machine helps us find the answers to some of those problems what is it a centrifuge it can simulate g-forces up to 21 GS that is 21 times the pull of the Earth's gravity which is far more than anyone can take we found the five seconds of six G's is enough to make a person blackout he's up to 6 G's now he's been there certainly more than five seconds there's an explanation for it notice the suit he's wearing that's what does it it permits a flier to take greater g-force and would otherwise be possible oh this is what you call a G suit is that right well how does it work well this suit contains five pneumatic bladders one in the stomach - and the thighs - and the calves which automatically inflate when that's the G comes on this increases the blood pressure which is the heart supplies to the brain therefore counteracting some of the G in these conditions we developed and tested the G suit on the centrifuge and it is now used in all of our jet fighter aircraft well it seems to me that aviation medicine has done a pretty good job of solving the problems of added speeds and altitude yes I'll agree with you so long as the man is inside the plane but what if something goes wrong and the flyer has to get out this is the way it was done in the old days of low speeds and low altitudes that is anything below 300 miles per hour and 25,000 feet but to get out of a jet plane traveling at 600 miles or more and an announcer tune of maybe 50,000 feet is completely impossible under the old-fashioned style where you jump out under your own power there's only one way to do it put your throttle back activate your oxygen bottle up on your left arm rest this is a test of catapult ejection the only way to get a man out of an aircraft flying at supersonic speeds is to fire him out seat and all we developed this gadget called an upward ejection track with it we can accustom the flier to the actual feeling in an emergency in the air head back Chinon feet in place arms in place by one ready this method of ejection seat bailouts has already saved the lives of about 400 of our Air Force pilots this is fine for the single-seat fighters but in their larger jet bombers we need something new a system of downward ejection have you been able to use downward ejection yet yes it has already been successfully tested in the air and has saved the life of a Bombardier of a b-47 I myself have ejected at over 500 miles per hour at 10,000 feet but we have tested it above 45,000 feet the highest altitude at which man has ever bailed out at over 500 miles an hour and we expect to continue our tests to find out how much higher and faster we can go with it for instance if you had just been catapulted out of a supersonic plane at high altitude this is what the earth would look like you must fall a long way before you can safely open your chute your body spins violently as you fall how much can a man take and still come out of it alive this is one of the things we're still in the process of finding out this is what we built to test the tumbling factor it is called and spin table well what does this test do it simulates this tumbling a man would go through after he bailed out by rejection but we have found is that a man and tolerate tumbling at 160 revolutions per minute for from three to seven seconds before he becomes unconscious but his automatic parachute will take care of him as you can see we still have a long way to go for example the effect of wind blast on the man when he's ejected at high speed what do you mean wind blast well Lieutenant Colonel John Stapp is conducting an experiment on this very thing on the track at Holloman Air Force Base New Mexico we're here at the aeromedical field laboratory of the Holloman Development Center in Alamogordo New Mexico to witness a spectacular event we're going to see the rocket-propelled sled test run with Colonel John P Stapp chief of the Aero medical field laboratory as the subject in a few minutes this sled will shoot down the track with its human passenger faster than any ground vehicle has ever gone Colonel Stapp is secured in the rocket sled by a special nylon web harness over his shoulders and chest he wears no protective clothing except a plastic helmet and clear plastic visor the purpose of the test is to determine the effects of wind blast and slow down on aircrew men bailing out of planes at supersonic speeds the sled will be propelled by nine rockets exerting a total force of a forty thousand pound thrust to hurl the sled down 2,800 feet of track slow motion cameras are mounted on the sled recording instruments are set up on Colonel Stapp to accurately determine the effects of acceleration deceleration and wind blast last minute details are carefully checked everything is in readiness at X - 30 seconds 30 seconds 25 seconds 20 seconds fifteen at sea 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 fire in five seconds an acceleration to 632 miles per hour the fastest ground speed ever to be attained by man in little more than six seconds the test is over and a new ground speed record is attained Colonel Stapp is helped out of the sled apparently suffering no ill effects colonel stat yes colonel that was an amazing feat could you tell us what were the actual accomplishments of this test first of all getting up to six hundred and thirty-two miles an hour on the ground exposed me to the same wind pressure conditions that a pilot would encounter on emerging from a cockpit in an ejection seat at an altitude of 35,000 feet and a speed of a thousand miles an hour second the pattern of deceleration that is they slowed down from six hundred and thirty two miles an hour to stop in one and for ten seconds is that sir two tons I believe on the body you mean during that one in one 10 second period your body weighed more than two tons yes I weighed two tons and I could tell it to what were the effects on you first of all the sled took off and it was like being hit in the back by a freight train that lasted for five seconds the last two seconds of that time had a quick visual blackout then the sled wind of the coasting phase and there my sight was immediately restored I got a quick glimpse of entering the water breaks after which my eyeballs hit my lids with such force that I was seeing red and shimmering the lights until the sled came to a stop they took the equipment off me I wasn't feeling very good and I felt even worse when I held my eyes open with my fingers and I couldn't see anything that lasted for eight and a half minutes did you have any lasting effects none whatsoever well let's put it this way the morning after the run ahead a couple of very black eyes in fact might say they were supersonic shiners how are the findings from this test valuable in aviation medicine primarily in determining human limits of Tolerance in comparison with aircraft performance especially in the field of seed ejection for escape from high-performance aircraft how does it feel to be the fastest man on earth I'd rather be known as the man who's had the fastest stop after all that's what does the Air Force some good perhaps now you can say that one of our major problems is to protect our personnel and fly and I believe we've been able to show you some of the ways we've learned to protect these people now I'd like to show you a department of our school which is a logical outgrowth of what you've been seeing as aircraft go further into space space flight will become not a possibility or a probability but a fact for this story you ought to talk to doctor hubertus strughold not to struggle what are the prospects for space travel let me say just this for the present stage of development I prefer to term space flights but we must reckon with the possibility that within the next 50 years men will not only make ot implied and a space condition in the vicinity of the earth but also that he will travel to or around moon 50 years now how how will that be possible in the last few years rocket have become almost a complain we have already sent them 250 miles in the air and there is hardly any doubt that the engineers will enable us to propel the rocket into outer space putting men in them is our next problem and this is just what we are working on in space medicine this experimental chamber is a prototype of the seal cabin men would have to live in in a rocket ship we must provide and maintain an adequate artificial atmosphere in such a cabin one of the problems men have to face during spaceflight there are others collisions with meteorite cosmic rays the pre mendes acceleration pressure and of course of the psychological hazard in living in a circumscribed area and in an environment where there is no neither up nor down neither up nor down what do you mean by that one of the strange things in spaceflight is the fact that no force of gravity will develop men will be completely weightless this is the condition which near the ground can be produced only for a few seconds for example in the first moment of a fast descending elevator or in a freefall well now could anybody stand there or could they get used to that sort of thing we hope so we hope that we've become used to it the fact is that they have already been made to study the effect of weightlessness on animals in one of the rocket launching by the air research and development command for passengers to monkeys and to mice we are sent 37 miles up into the sky the medical doctors were going to test on them the effects of tree conditions which any living creature would experience in spaceflight first the tremendous pressure of acceleration during take-off second the weightlessness during most of the remainder of the flight and at last how to get them safely back to the earth what would happen to the animals as they underwent these rapid changes from one unnatural condition to another cameras inside the rocket recorded on film just what was happening to the mice throughout their trip in the control room recording instruments kept the scientist informed of how the Hat blood pressure etc of the monkeys were affected everything was ready in the tenth moment before the rocket was fired acceleration after take-off subject the mice to forty or four times the normal pull of gravity this means that they weigh four times their normal weight and their legs are unable to support it by the time all fuel is burnt the rocket is hurtling up at more than 1,900 miles per hour without support from the rocket motor the missile actually floats on up and demise and the ball float to in their container now they are weightless and the conclusion of the mice becomes more pronounced to them there is no up or down at 190,000 feet that 36 mile the nose cone is separated by a small powder charge the ribbon drag parachute has come out simultaneously but has no effect yet the nose is in a freefall the mice are still weightless as the capsule fault the two lower altitude it begins to slow up the ribbon parachute bites into denser air and the nose decelerates rapidly for demise zero gravity gives way to a deceleration for us of to 5g at 20,000 feet a second parachute has blossomed out gently lowering the nose to earth this is the last leg of the journey and gradually the weight goes back to normal the mice and the monkeys who made this trip experienced and survived without any ill effects some of the major difficulties of spaceflight pressure many times their own weight weightlessness life in an artificial atmosphere and escape this brief test revealed no reason why men can not fly just as high into the sky as monkeys and mice the primary concern in aviation medicine is the human being keeping them equal to or a better ahead of the engineering and technical advances in aeronautical science the objective is the extension of man's horizons to the farthest reaches of the universe through testing and experimentation the search goes on many great advancements have been made many things are still left to be done it is only a matter of time however until we should conquer space