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The End of Oscar. At Edwards, Stapp found himself in command of 2,000 ft. of rail track, the Gee-Whizz (a rocket sled built by Northrop Aircraft, Inc.), a bare barracks that was supposed to serve as a lab, and seven hard-working Northrop employees. His mission: to determine human tolerance to deceleration so that adequate aircraft safety harnesses could be developed.
It took Stapp a few months of spectacular scrounging and "moonlight requisitioning" to put together the kind of test setup he required. The lab needed water, so he "borrowed" 4,400 ft. of pipe, talked some civilian workers into doing the necessary welding, and paid them off with free medical care for their families. (Throughout his four busy years at Edwards, Stapp found time to give medical care to servicemen's families and civilian workers, often made more than half a dozen night calls, never accepted a cent from what he called "my curbstone clinic.")
Proceeding cautiously, Stapp sent his sled on 32 rocket runs carrying a dummy passenger. At least one of these experiments gave him pause. When the sled's brakes grabbed, "Oscar Eight-Ball," the anthropomorphic 185-lb. dummy, lurched forward in obedience to Newton's second law of motion. He broke his harness, slammed through an inch-thick pine windshield as if it were tissue paper, and soared 710 ft. down the track bed.
Observing Oscar's fate, Stapp calmly noted that he needed a stronger harness and, on Dec. 10, 1947, he took his first ride, a one-rocket spurt that reached 90 m.p.h. The next day he fired three rockets and went twice as fast.
No Sweat. Volunteers began to turn up, and selection became a problem. Stapp wanted no exhibitionists or thrill seekers. He was fanatically careful. No runs were permitted on Mondays or Fridays—a man with a weekend on his mind might not be completely reliable. Small sins, such as forgetting to wear a mouthpiece, drew mild but prompt punishment. Always, when a volunteer was being strapped in the sled, Colonel Stapp was on hand to make small talk, to mention something he wanted done later that day—"Routine talk to help make the man feel that everything was routine."
By May of 1948, Colonel Stapp had himself taken 16 rides and had been subjected to g stresses up to 35 times the pull of gravity. Slowly, the impressive statistics were piling up. "The men at the mahogany desks," says Stapp, "thought that the human body would never take more than 18 gs. Here we were, taking double that—with no sweat."
As the runs got tougher, they began to take their toll. When one of his volunteers showed signs of shock after a 35-g deceleration, Stapp lost no time repeating the run himself. His vision blurred to a smoky green fog, and he wound up with a body full of bruises where he had slammed against his harness. His right hand slipped from its grip on the seat's arm rest and his wrist broke as it hit against the hand grip. But he had discovered what he set out to find: the previous rider had failed to keep his head down while decelerating, and his helmet had been pulled off. With the new helmets, says Colonel Stapp proudly, "Your head may come off, but the helmet won't."