This Was The Crazy Rocket Experiment That Led To 'Murphy's Law'

The rocket sled is a system that was made to experiment with G-forces in the fifties.

In its simplest form, a rocket sled consists of a chair attached to a sled on a long stretch of railroad track with a rocket engine strapped to the back. The rocket ignites, the sled fires forward, the chair and occupant go along for the ride.

Some of the classic adages about reliability, technology and dependability were coined by the men who either climbed in or analyzed the sleds, including "Murphy's Law" and "Stapp's Law." 

It all started with the Gee-Whiz decelerator

Aerospace conventional wisdom up to the late forties held that human beings could only withstand forces up to around 18 g-forces without dying. Colonel John Stapp, a doctor in the newly-formed Air Force, set out to prove this was nonsense. 

The railroad track at Muroc Army Air Field — now Edwards Air Force Base — was 2,000 feet long with a 45 foot hydraulic breaking system. It was originally designed to test the German V-1 rocket. The sled weighed 1,500 lbs, could hold a person and had room for a number of rocket engines in the rear. 

First they used a dummy...

At first the Gee Whiz was tested with a crash test dummy, known as Oscar Eightball. Eightball would suffer a violent ejection that sent him flying 700 feet, as well as other work-related "injuries."

These problems were fixed, however, and then they strapped a chimpanzee in the seat.

Finally they needed a human volunteer.

Then, Colonel Stapp himself strapped into the rocket sled

After 35 unmanned test runs, John Stapp himself rode the sled with a single rocket propelling it, hitting 10 Gs of force in the process.

He was hooked.

Within months, Stapp had hit 35 Gs of force, blowing away the previously believed 18 G fatality point. The research changed the way airplanes were designed nearly immediately, accounting for additional safety measures and new capabilities. 

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