Thanks for the link. Thanks for the midi warning as well. Ugh.
So, if someone had actually ejected at a supersonic speed in 1955, what was up with the bear in 1962?
Did they forget about the guy in 1955? Were they trying to expand on their knowledge of bears? i.e “Well, we know that they do in fact shit in the woods. Lets see if they can fly.”
I guess I’m only being half serious, but I swear that I’ve been wondering why they would use a bear (And whether poor Smokey got a parachute.) all day long.
Actually, I’ve been trying to imagine what was going through the bear’s head at the time. I swear to God that I’ll send a million dollars to anyone that could send me a video clip of the bear at the time of ejection.
I want to know the details on this. Who has access to a school with outdated referance guides for teachers.
The best I came up with is “the following is from NASA, The First 35 Years 1958-1983: A Resource for Teachers” published by NASA and printed by the Superintentendent of Documents, Goverment Printing Office, Washington D.C. 1983 page 96."
Ivan, this page says that the first life saved by an ejection seat was in May,1949.
The first airborne ejection was by a German test pilot named Schenk in 1942.
The first airborne ejections (outside of Germany), first using manniquins, then tranquilized bears began in May,1945.I would have to guess that they got parachutes, but haven’t found anything stating that or talking about the success.
I just keep picturing State O’Maine from The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving sitting in a plane, casually looking out the window and thinking to himself,
“Now, I was just riding my motorcycle a minute ago… This is certainly not my motorcycle…”
All Phobia’s link is the factoid that on March 21, 1962, A bear became the first creature to be ejected at supersonic speeds, followed by the information that what follows, on the Ranger program, is from “NASA: The First 25 Years”. So finding a copy of this won’t help.
And anyway, the whole point is not just to find out whether the ejection mechanism works–they also want to know how the parachute deployment system does in a real life situation.
Thanks Duck Duck Goose. I have been hoping that somebody would find more information. I had this picture in my mind of the government shooting bears wearing collar equipment, from some projectal to see what happens when they reach supersonic speeds. Sort of like shooting the turkey carcasses through jet engines. This being the US government in 1962, I could see them splatting bears all over the ground.
I can’t believe that you people would think that the bears would be shot into the air without a parachute. Think about it for just a second: You’re about to launch a bear 200 feet up into the air to measure the effects of acceleration stresses on the body of the bear. You get Yogi and his rocket sled up to Mach 1.0 and fire the seat. Said bear flies off into the wild blue yonder sans parachute and smacks into the ground, butt first (this is hypothetical, after all).
Now, how do you determine which injuries were sustained during the 10G shove in the ass caused by the rocket powered seat and which injuries were cased by the 500G smack into the ground at the terminus of the trajectory? Seems like the lack of parachute would be rather counter-productive, eh?
I said with electronics attached to it. I pictured them being sent up with whatever propellling device the goverment cooked up. I am talking about the USA government that subjected groups of people to inhuman testing at the time. A bear would have meant nothing to them.
Unfortunately, the 2nd Canadian Parabear Regiment’s web page is under construction, but the email link is still active if you want to make inquiries as to parachuting bears. In the past they have included both pics and vids of successful parabear drops.
