Evening Star Newspaper, May 10, 1931, Page 77

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MAY 10, 1981, - §3 How Fast Can Man Travel and Still Live? Airplane pilots frequently lose con- sciousness when t suddenly change direction while flying at a terrific speed. Muto and speedboat racers have to guard themselves carefully. BY JOHN L. COONTZ. PAINT roar rolls down the sands. It increases momentarily, and the on- lookers shrink instinctively in terror. But before they can recover all is over. Capt. Malcolm Campbell, Eng- lish automobile racing driver, has played a hand with Death and won. In a few minutes judges hang up outside the door of the world a new automobile speed record. It reads 245 miles per hour. A great concourse of people is gathered at Spithead Bay, England, a few days after the ider Air Cup races, September, 1929. ing thos> 1aces a flying officer of his majesty's service, H. R. D. Waghorn, drove a supermarine plane at an average speed of 328.6 miles per hour over a 217-mile course. Now Squadron Leader A. H. Olebar is climbing into his plane, a supermarine powered with an R-R, R-6 engine. The weather is perfect and Squardon Leader Olebar is tense but calm. A moment of deathly quiet save for the roar of the plane’s engine, and then—he’s off! Be- fore that plane settles down again a new world record for airplang speed has been es- tablished. Olebar in his flight split the ether at the stupendous rate of 357.23 miles per hour! ET us go to Germany., We clamber into a queer, coffin-shaped silver ear standing on & perfect stra‘ghtaway roadbed. It is the new heralded ‘“glorified bus with an airplane motor.” Dr. Franz Kruckenberg of the Han- nover Traffic Experimental Laboratory is at the controls. The four-bladed airplane propellers of this “Zeppelin on wheels” begin to move. ‘The 400-horsepower gasoline motor roars and eoughs amid clouds of exhaust. The white death-head streamlined box with its 24 pas- sengers splits the morning atmosphere at an average speed of 100 miles per hour, And now it's Gar Wood at the wheel of Miss ‘America IX, or Miss England piloted by Kaye Don, or Betty Carstairs on the Detroit River, traveling at a spced of approximately 100 miles per hour; or it’s a rocket plane or rocket sled or rocket car cutting space like falling stars. Can man stond the pace? OCan the human erganism stand the pressure? He stands these, you say. Yes, but these are nothing compared %0 what it wi'l be necessary for him to stand ere long if ~utomotive designing engineers ac- complish “7hat they hope to in motors and air- plane-body designers in bodies—nothing com- pered with the speed man will be in a position to avail himself of in a few years if dreams ean be made to come true. *“There is plenty more speed in my Bluebird. X shall shoot for the 300-mile mark within the next few years,” says Campbell. And in the marshes of the Ohio River lies the wreckage of a swift monoplane, all that remains of a re- eent transcontinental speed trial by Capt. Ira Eaker, United States Army Air Corps. The little plane was capable of more than 235 miles per hour. And in an airport at Oakland, Calif., sits a specially constructed plane waiting for the master hand of Col. Charles Augustus Lind- bergh, powered with a 650-horsepower motor and capable of an estimated speed of 250 miles per hour. Up at Syracuse University Harry W. Bull, a 21-year-old student, plans to surpass his 75-miles-per-hour rocket-sled record on the fee of Oneida Lake, All these spced assaults assembled are only evidence of what man has in mind regarding speed in transportation and his inclination to use it to the utmost of his capacity. But what § that capacity? “Speed alone, asidc from the effects engen- dered by the wind ond other factors which may enter in, apparently, so far as known, has no One Thousand Miles an Hour Will Be Safe, Provided the Course Is a Straight Line, but Look Out for Human Organism When Flight Is Suddenly Arrested or Course Is Quickly Changed, Says Col. L. M. Hatha- way of the United States Army Air Corps. N effects upon the human organism,” declares Col. L. M. Hathaway, flight surgeon of the United States Army Air Corps.* Those “other factors” alluded to by Col. Hathaway refer to sudden arresting, sudden starting and sudden chamging of direction of a plane in flight. He explains: “If a pilot is driving at terrific speed and quickly pulls up from a dive, his motion is sud- denly arrested and the direction of his flight immediately changed. This has a violent effect upon the pilot and also upon the airplane. Pilots have been known to lose consciousness momentarily and frequently ‘turn black’ during such maneuvers. They are cautioned against too sudden application of controls in such maneuvers. There are flying orders in effect to prevent not only ill effects upon the pilot but possible structural failure of the airplane due to the violent chang> in direction while flying at great speed. uBUT there is an effect upon the human or= ganism due to the disturbance of the cir- culation in sudden and violent changes in di- rection or in the rate of progress through the alr. Centrifugal force enters into this phase of flying. An example of this is the maneuver known as the ‘outside loop,’ in which maneuver all loose parts about the machine, including the pilot, tend to be thrown out. The pilot, being strapped in place, will not be thrown out so long as his attachments hold. However, his blood, being a fluid medium, will tend to be thrown toward the periphery and away from the center of the circle or curve which he is de- scribing in an inverted position, and his head, being toward the periphery, will undergo con- gestion affecting the cranial contents, possibly with injury. “When suddenly pulling up from a steep, fast dive the reverse takes place. Here the pilot is pressed violently toward his seat in the cock- pit and his blood thrown in a direction away from the brain and the head, producing conges- tion in the abdominal parts of the body, with corresponding anemia in the cranial contents, This may produce temporary blindness or even unconsciousness. Ordinarily, the senses and consciousness quickly recover as soon as the cause of the circulatory disturbance ceases to ack.” These conclusions of Col. Hathaway with re- spect to speed upon the human organism are not immature. They are the summation of studies by medical men with different types of men and machines over a long period of flying. Flying is an activity foreign to the nature of man. Whatever else he may have evolved from, it is a pretty safe bet that he did not descend from a bird. About him are no marks or rem- nants of flying paraphernalia. His feet have ever been leaden, bottomed in the clay of the earth, The way of the eagle has been his last dream. Hence man’s flying presents a field of study unique, new and most interesting—a study of him physiologically and biologically. Of special interest to the medical profession are man’s flylng activities, not only from the standpoint of adaptability of the human organ- ism to flight through the air but also the en- durance of it in its new and strange emnviron- ment and the effect of that particular thing we are discussing here—speed—upon it. It is only from data gathered that we can predicate the effect of higher speed than has yet been attained upon the body, its nervous system, its eirculatory system and its various delicately balanced and related organs. With a speed of 1,000 miles per hour the goal of avia- tion engineers, evidence is that man can stand it provided he keeps his head and body pro- tected from the rushing winds and avoids those sudden starts, stops and changes in direction. But this has reference only to speed, be it noted. = The factors of plane vibration due Yo motor and wind, of pressure changes due to altitude changes, cold and so forth are something else. They have been aptly called the “strains of fly- ing,” and they are most harmfully effective at terrific speed. “Eyestrain accompanied by headache,” says an aeronautical official, “is felt by aviators after a long flight. This is temporary, but the cumu- lative results of long-continued flying leave per manent traces. “Prolonged exposure to cold winds causes and aggravates catarrhal processes, which, extend- ing to the middle ear, produce hardening and thickening of the ear drum and occasionally re- sult in inflammation of the middie ear. Sudden changes of speed and direction, rapidly chang- ing atmospheric pressure and the terrific roar of Col. Charles Lindbergh is soon to test a new plane for speed with safety com- the engine affect the delicate structure of the ear. “Low oxygen pressure at first over-stimulates the lungs, heart, arteries and nervous system, producing in many a condition similar to alco- hol. Later, depression sets in, and if continued oo long death or permanent injury may re- sult. Flights higher than 5,000 feet exhaust an aviator far more than those of a lower level. The heart and all the factors the body can mobilize must work overtime to maintain efficiency. “After a man has flowh 25 long as he has walked he may expect to have the necessary resistance. The human organism would be gen- erously endowed if its heart, lungs, nervous and other physical equipment could continuously surmount the stresses of hurtling through the air at terrific speed, sudden changes in direc- tion and the rapid change in atmospheric con- ditions, temperature and barometric pressures. Until then he must continue subject to de- terioration when exposing his body to un- precedented demands. Eyestrain, deafness, catarrhal conditions of the nose, throat and ears and the risk of nervous instability are among the penalties he must pay.” ANY fantastic tales have been written about trips to the moon and near planets by men-~of this age.» These plans involve, pre- sumably, the propulsion of the human body by some powerful agency to the far edge of the gravitational belt of the earth, where, entering the gravitational belt of the moon or planet to be visited, it will pass on to its destination. Before such a trip or trips can be taken two requisites are necessary: something in which to make the trip and mechanism to propel it, and the ability of the human organism to stand up under the strain it would be called upon to sus- tain on such a journey. Say, for instance, the moon is the object of a visit. Approximately 250,000 miles of space would have to be trav- versed. At 1,000 miles per hour it would take 250 hours, slightly over 10 days. Sufficient food could be stowed for such a journey and comfort assured, provided no lower temperatures would be encountered than have been encountered by man at the height of the airplane ceiling—89 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Today scientists in both the New and Old Worlds are interesting themselves in rocket- propelled tubes for interspace travel. Reeently there exploded on Mount Redorta, near Vienna, a rocket designed by Dr. Darwin Lyon of New York. The rocket was of aluminum, stood 15 feet high and weighed 300 pounds. It was not the intention of Dr. Lyon to fly this rocket to the moon, but to develop through studies of it a rocket which might some day carry a person to the faraway sphere. But the moon is a dead earth. It is lifeless and cold. It probably has an atmosphere, but that atmosphere would not sustain life as we know it on earth. Again, the gravitation attraction of the moon is much less than that of the earth, the exact ratio being 1 to 6. If an apple should be dropped to the surface of the moon from above it, it would fall at the rate of 234 feet for the first second, as compared with 16.08 feet on the earth. So, while man could no doubt survive the speed that would be necessary to project him in a straight line to the moon, it is extremely doubtful—to give the most liberal construction -—if he could survive the approach to the moon, * For one of the things that science has discov- ered with respect to speed and the human orggnism is that any speed is safe as long as it is not deviated from too suddenly or the course altered too quickly. . (Copyright, 19310 ~ pretl