Hotbox

One of the hazards of the air age is the risk of being roasted in a friction-heated cockpit. The fastest jet planes need refrigerating systems to keep cockpits bearable. But what if the cooler goes haywire while the plane is in flight? Air scientists have wondered what the pilot should do.

Should he try to bail out (a risky business) before the heat wave cooks him? Or should he hang on, sweating out the heat, until he gets his aircraft slowed down?

The only way to find out was to determine just what temperature a man can stand. The Air Force asked Dr. Craig Taylor, physiologist and engineer of the University of California at Los Angeles. Last week he had some answers.

Professor Taylor's fiery furnace for testing airborne Shadrachs is made from a big steel cylinder with a fan blowing dry air into it, past an outside battery of electric grids. The human guinea pig is wheeled in, reclining in a canvas chair and festooned with electric thermometers. The first experiments were rather cautious; then Taylor and his staff increased the temperature in the hotbox until it passed the boiling point of water (212DEG F). The victims came out uncooked and not permanently damaged.

The top test was passed triumphantly by the professor himself. With hands, feet and neck specially protected, he was wheeled into the hotbox when its temperature stood at 230DEG. He stayed inside for 15 1/2 minutes while the heat climbed to 262DEG. His face turned lobster-red when the hot air hit it, but that was about the only abnormal effect the heat had on the professor.

The secret of the body's resistance to heat is its own cooling system (perspiration). Moisture evaporating from the skin surrounds exposed parts of the body with an envelope of cooler air. With the hotbox at 236DEG, for instance, the air 3/4 in. from the nose is 226DEG. The skin of the nose itself is at a safe 119.5DEG. Air drawn into the nostrils is cooled down so much that it does not damage the lungs. The general temperature of the body rises only a couple of degrees.

Not all hotbox alumni got as high marks as the professor; some vomited, suffered extreme fatigue and sensations of suffocation. The thing to worry about is the temperature of the blood moving toward the brain. Professor Taylor thinks this would give the best warning signal of approaching collapse under heat.

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