Re: Fighter Fur Balls a thing of the past?

On Fri, 01 Jun 2001 19:34:32 -0400, Richard and Emily Bell
<rlbell@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>If you can sidestep Einstein, odds are the inertial compensators can
get around
>the problem of g-loading pilots to death.  

You know, I KNEW someone was going to mention that! The inertial
compensators
may save someone inside the fighter, but won't affect the actual inertia
of
the fighter itself. IF you can kill the inertia of the fighter, then
you've
not only countered Einsteinian physics, but you've essentially laid the
ground
work for battledreadnoughts manoeuvring like fighters (so, why have
fighters?).

If you don't kill inertia of the fighter outside of the ship, a smaller,
lighter fighter will still have an edge. Without a human, an escape
mechanism,
and a life support system, the computer run fighter still has a major
edge.

>Forty g's is not unduly harmful, so if we can avoid blood pooling
>(and this scheme does), we can return to the heyday of pilots being
limited by
>their machines.

CBC Television's "The Nature of Things" program had a fascinating
documentary
on the history of crash test dummies. The USAF Colonel, Dr. Sapp,
conducted
ejector seat research projects on himself (in the belief that he should
do
anything he was going to ask his volunteers to do). In one gruesome test
(which he survived, but is still icky to hear), he sustained 43 gs. His
eyes
ended up bleeding (they whites ended up going completely red). He said
it felt
like his eyes literally popped out of their sockets. He had bruises over
his
body where dust inside his suit caused bruising and blistering. He
decelerated
from a high speed (his peak speed was around 630 mph) to 0 in 1.3
seconds. 

So, blood pooling may not be your only problem...

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan, 
   "Jack B. Quick, Boy Inventor"