Actually, survivable accelerations are a lot higher than most folks realize. That's because what we hear about most of the time are the gees experienced by fighter pilots.
They experience acceleration in the second worst direction (head to feet). The worst is feet to head (because rather than passing out from blood loss to the brain, the extremely high blood pressure in the damage damage the brain and eyes)
On a proper acceleration couch, you experience the force from front to back. NASA figures state that in that position 3 gees is endurable "indefinitely".
15 gees is the next limit as at that point it becomes impossible to control your arms (and fingers?) well enough to operate controls.
Kinda interesting how well that corresponds with the "normal" limits of the drives on Duquense's ship and on the Skylark.
After that the limit is around 70-80 gees at which point you get some serious damage. Though given the nature of the tests involved, much of that may have been from surge rather than acceleration.
So things aren't actually all that outrageous!
I had a chance to buy a first edition of Skylark of space at a con back around 1990. I've kicked myself ever since for not buying it. And yes, this was the one that still had the co-author on it. and I suspect, the same stuff that's in the Project Gutenberg version.
And yeah, given that the folks who printed the archival versions of the Lensman stories only printed the first two Skylark books. I suspect that the last two (and The Vortex Blaster) are still under copyright.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2020-06-12 03:59 am (UTC)They experience acceleration in the second worst direction (head to feet). The worst is feet to head (because rather than passing out from blood loss to the brain, the extremely high blood pressure in the damage damage the brain and eyes)
On a proper acceleration couch, you experience the force from front to back. NASA figures state that in that position 3 gees is endurable "indefinitely".
15 gees is the next limit as at that point it becomes impossible to control your arms (and fingers?) well enough to operate controls.
Kinda interesting how well that corresponds with the "normal" limits of the drives on Duquense's ship and on the Skylark.
After that the limit is around 70-80 gees at which point you get some serious damage. Though given the nature of the tests involved, much of that may have been from surge rather than acceleration.
So things aren't actually all that outrageous!
I had a chance to buy a first edition of Skylark of space at a con back around 1990. I've kicked myself ever since for not buying it. And yes, this was the one that still had the co-author on it. and I suspect, the same stuff that's in the Project Gutenberg version.
And yeah, given that the folks who printed the archival versions of the Lensman stories only printed the first two Skylark books. I suspect that the last two (and The Vortex Blaster) are still under copyright.