This article originally appeared in a September issue of the Babson Free Press; many thanks to Justin Peagram for asking me to write it.

The title of “fastest man on the earth” is not rightfully bestowed upon Superman or Chuck Yeager, but the erstwhile John Stapp, doctor, Ph.D., and Colonel of the U.S. Air Force. While the purveyor of all things right and good in this world, Wikipedia, attributes the seeding of Murphy’s law to him, his contributions to the matter at hand concern his studies on the effects of high G-forces on the human body. The tests involved seating a human subject on a sled dubbed the “Gee-Wiz” fitted onto railroad tracks and boosting the contraption to insane speeds with rockets, and then braking rapidly. The good doctor was himself a frequent guinea pig, and suffered numerous fractures and injuries after subjecting himself to 46 G’s. For some perspective, according to Popular Science magazine, a “fighter pilot pulling 9 G’s [would have to support]… 1,800 pounds.” All in the name of science.

His findings are the principle reason that child car seats and military planes today such as the C-130 seat their passengers with their backs toward the front of the transport vehicle. So if aft-facing seats are up to military standards and safe enough for our toddlers, why are we still flying face-forward in commercial airlines?

The only mention of this issue online seems to be two antiquated articles from the New York Times dating back to the fifties, and a more recent feature, “Flying backward, flying safer” in a backwater Oregon newspaper, the Mail Tribune. The ostensible source of the safety benefit is that with the seat back behind you, it provides cushioning and more evenly spreads the force in the event of a crash.

Many ‘experts’ try to dismiss the idea outright as near ludicrous, claiming that not only would you be more liable to be hit with flying debris, but passengers would not stand for it due to increased motion sickness. Let’s try to weigh the evidence. The U.S. Air Force reported that seating passengers facing the rear increased their chances of survival by a factor of 7; I think surviving is more critical than worrying about being hit by someone’s stray luggage.

As for the second claim, I have come to appreciate the capability of the human mind to adapt through firsthand experience. Earlier this summer I was foolish enough to respond to a flyer seeking volunteers for a supposed “antigravity experiment” conducted at MIT. Harboring delusions of grandeur at involvement with a soon-to-be-classic experiment, my interest was piqued and I showed up bright and early. I was promptly strapped into a horizontal bed, raised from the floor and rotating clockwise, in the complete dark. As soon as we got to 2 G’s, the fun began; the grad student told me to rotate my head to the side. I immediately felt as if I were tumbling back in space and flailed out for the red panic button, nearly losing continence in the process. After a few goes, however, I could repeat the process without feeling an overwhelming amount of nausea. In other words, let the passengers deal with it, close the windows, or give them a forward camera view to look at on their video monitors.

As with most endeavors, in practicality the underlying issue is one of convention and money. Someone, somewhere obviously made a decision, and through Thomas Schelling’s concept of “least effort” didn’t bother to consider any alternatives to the default, forward-facing seats. Ripping out the status quo would involve an unnecessary cost in the view of the already cash-strapped airline industry. Not only that, but due to technical considerations, such seats would need to be heavier than in our status quo. According to an article in Flight International magazine that refers to a study by a Japanese government agency, “A 440-seat Boeing 747… with rearward-facing seats would likely to weigh [7 tons] more…” and lead to increase in seat prices by 20%.

This may seem like a trivial matter to some, akin to asking why school buses don’t have seat belts (the larger mass of the bus as compared to a car, traveling at a lower speed means there’s less deceleration – making seat belts gratuitous). Planes, in comparison, travel near the speed of sound and have horrific crashes resulting in close to a thousand fatalities every year. The only way to push for such changes is to research ways to reduce the cost to airlines, or have the government subsidize the airlines. In either case, the wherewithal to actually make this happen would involve a lot of campaigning, probably to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Natural Transportation Safety Board. And once happens in this country, people overseas will start asking questions, and soon enough, it’ll tip and become the norm.

And oh, you might as well say goodbye now to your friends who fly the Club Class of British Airways with their flat, 180-degree reclining beds.

the test setup (pictures courtesy the ejectionsite).