Speed-Sled

One of the toughest problems in modern high-speed flying is how to help the pilot bail out alive. A secondary problem is how to test new escape devices. Pilots are understandably reluctant to trust their lives to untried gadgets, and when a pilot does bail out of a single-place fighter, the airplane at least is sure to be lost.

The Air Force hopes to solve the problems with a high-speed, ground-borne "airplane": a rocket-propelled sled. Built with the help of Northrop Aircraft, Inc., it roars along a two-mile section of track at Edwards (formerly Muroc) Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. To eliminate jolts, the rails were laid at night so that heat waves would not upset the sighting instruments.

Air Force men estimate that five rockets with 11,000 lbs. of thrust each will push the sled at 1,100 m.p.h. Other rockets firing forward bring it to a standstill.

When the sled has reached the speed the testers want, the escape device in the simulated cockpit ejects a dummy pilot. Movie cameras record what happens to it (see cut), and the testers figure out later whether a live pilot would miss the tail surfaces of a real airplane and live to parachute to earth.

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