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A broad safety belt is buckled over his lap; shoulder straps are snapped to the safety belt and then to the seat to hold him in place when the water brakes grab. His elbows are cinched close to his sides by a strap running across his back. At 400 m.p.h. and over, wind blast can start a man's limbs flailing uncontrollably with bone-snapping force.
His legs are strapped together above and below the knees; his wrists are lashed to the strap above his knees. A chest strap hauls him so tightly against the seat back that all breathing motion is confined to his diaphragm. A rubber bite block (equipped with a recording accelerometer) is slipped between his teeth; a helmet visor is latched down in front of his face; a cord is placed in one hand, ready to trigger a movie camera aimed at his face. Then sled and rider are left alone; all hands retire to the safety of the control building or smaller concrete bunkers placed at intervals along the track.
The high wail of a siren announces: 60 seconds to go. Stapp begins to tense his muscles, stares at the long white ditch of the track bed below him. He concentrates on the cord in his hand; he must remember to pull it when the countdown reaches five. One last breath to last him for the ride, then he is off. "It's like being assaulted in the rear by a fast freight train."
How does it feel? By the time the sled hit the water brakes, wrote Stapp about one of his recent rides, "vision became a shimmering salmon-colored field with no images ... It felt as though my eyes were being pulled out of my head, about the same sort of sensation as when a molar is yanked . . . When the sled stopped, the salmon-colored blur was still there ... I lifted my eyelids with my fingers, but I couldn't see a thing. It was as though I was looking directly at the sun through closed eyelids . . .
"They put me on a stretcher and in a minute or two I saw some blue specks . . . In about eight minutes or so after the stopping of the sled the blue specks became constant and pretty soon they became blue sky and clouds. I saw one of the surgeons wiggling his fingers at me and I was able to count them. Then I knew that . . . my retinas had not been detached and I wasn't going to be blind. I had two of the most beautiful shiners any man ever had." The shiners were caused by his eyeballs shooting forward in their sockets.
Hope of Immortality. Not long ago a friend asked Colonel Stapp what he thought about as he sat there strapped in his sled, waiting for the countdown. The reply: "First I look around at the mountains and at the bright skies and I don't think about anything. Then I say to myself, 'Paul, it's been a good life.' "
It has been a rich life, the success story of a frail, skinny kid who used to be afraid of automobiles but grew up to become the "bravest man in the Air Force." It is the achievement of a physician with enough wit and wisdom left over to be something of a poet, humorist and philosopher as well.