Evening star., 1946-05-19
BY Thomas r. Henry


THE first man on the moon prob
ably will be a lady, about 80
years old D.
Inclosed In the warhead Of q
superrocket, she would have about twice
as much chance of surviving the crush
ing force of the enormous accelerations
OF velocity necessary to escape the earth's
gravitational field as man-that is, II
women compared with men share the
same advantages as female rats, rabbits
and cats over male animals Of the same
species.
This is perhaps the most inexplicable
Of the many weird results obtained in
the physiology laboratory Of the Uni
versity Of Virginia, where extensive tests
have been conducted during the war on
the effects Of accelerations and decelera-
tions of gravity on animals. These tests
have been conducted by DR.. s. w. Brit
ton Of the University of Virginia Hos
pital and his staff. The animals have
been attached to specially constructed
centrifuge and subject to centrifugal
forces as high as 120 revolutions per
minute for two minutes. This produces
the exact equivalent of Is times the
crushing and distorting force of the
normal acceleration of gravity-or 80
feet per second per second.
The Day of Thousand.
Mile-an-Hour Speeds
The experiments look foreward to the
day, perhaps not too far distant, of l,000-
mile-an-hour air speeds with possible
rapid and violent changes of direction.
Before the war the effects of gas
this force is known-on higher organ-
isns was unknown. It first came to
public notice with reports of "blackouts'
and "redouts" suffered by dive-bomber
pilots when they made the essential
quick turn upward at the bottom OF a
dive. 1t was calculated that they were
subjected to force of about six "g" and
possibly for very brief instants to as
much as 10 "g" This was believed to be
about the limit OF human endurance.
The experiments Of DR.. Britton and
his staff show that animals can remain
alive when subjected in the centrifuge
to forces of rs "g" for as much as two
minutes. They come out Of the expe-
rience without visible manning, but
often die-just why is not clearly under
stood-within few hours.
Speed, per Sc, DR.. Britton points out.
is Of no physiological concern. and ap-
parently there are no limits to the
amount an organism can endure.
Everybody on earth, he calculates, Is
moving at speed OF about 100000 miles
an hour-combining the rotation and
orbital speed Of the earth, the movement
Of the solar system within the galaxy
and the rotation Of the galaxy-but is
completely unaware of the fact. The
only time discomfort is felt from speed
is when there is a sudden change, as
when an elevator comes to a quick stop
or an automobile starts very quickly
from rest.
'Redouts' and 'Blackouts'
OF the Brain at Speed
The primary result is that the center
Va AoNAey VI WAC 6OAy 10 N4okAoNSO W4ti4
more or less distortion of blood and
tissues as consequence. In the black
out phenomenon, for example, blood is
thrown away from the brain while in
the weirder, but probably less dangerous,
redout the brain is suf1used with blood
Dr.. Britton and his co-workers used in
their experiments rats, rabbits, cats,
dogs and monkeys. They also expert
mented with themselves to a small ex-
tent, but so little was known of the after
effects that they were forbidden to use
any volunteer human subjects. Their
experimental animals were subjected to
from 30 to 180 revolutions a minute, but
120 revolutions a minute for two min
utes was taken as q standard for the
most severe tests.
They do not attempt at present to
explain some of their results.
They found, for example, that fully
mature animals withstood the experience