Word: stapp
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Faster & Faster. Stapp's first sled ride was seven years ago. The sled, a one-rocket job, got up to 90 m.p.h. and coasted to an easy stop. Later rides were not so gentle. More powerful rockets made the new-model sleds start like frightened jackrabbits and pushed them along the rails at the speed of fighter planes. Stapp rode them all. He suffered the acceleration forces as they speeded up and the even greater forces of deceleration as the water brake (long trough of water engaging a scoop on the sled) brought them to a wrenching stop. Faster...
...Stapp, the careful scientist, recorded every novel sensation. He felt the risin; storm of the wind against his body, am the terrible thrust of the rockets. Durin; the five seconds that they burned, they accelerated the sled with a force of 7½ to 9 Gs,* pressing him back against the sea with 7½ to 9 times the weight of his body For about 2½ seconds he could see the track as a racing blur. Then his vision narrowed and blacked out altogether. Since he did not lose consciousness, he knew that the Gs had drained the blood...
Specks of Blue. When the rocket burned out. the Gs died down to nothing The blackness in Stapp's eyes turned briefly to yellow, and like a fleeting vision he caught a glimpse of the world. It was gone in a blur of salmon-colored light a the water brake took hold and powerful deceleration forces, up to 35 Gs, slammed him against his belts...
...There was intense pain in the eyes, says Stapp dispassionately. "It felt a though my eyes were being pulled out of my head-about the same sort of sensation as when a molar is being yanked an you feel the roots begin to give. I had great difficulty breathing because of the tightness of my chest strap. When the sle stopped, the salmon blur was still there." As a medical man, Stapp knew that th Gs had pulled his eyeballs outward an "impinged them against the eyelids." He did not know how far they had pulled, or whether the retinas...
...Stapp considered himself in excellent shape in other respects. He had two black eyes where blood vessels had ruptured; he had strap burns and bruises where bits of sand had blasted against him. His sinuses were blocked for three days; but in two days more he passed a physical examination and returned to duty...