Increasing G force tolerance

Question

How can I increase the G tolerance for a person who will be participating in intense side to side/lateral movement as well as some vertical high G maneuvers. Ideally the application should be able to fit in a small vehicle/ platform that is capable of combat or intense racing. Visibility doesn't really matter in this case,

So far I've looked at liquid immersion and directly pumping to the brain but those lead to more questions than answers.

Anyone whose ever played Wipeout, Redout or even Armored Core 4/4A would be with the intense side to side movement that is being put on the pilots.

Answer 1

You can do multiple things (with current-day or near future tech):

• Remove perceived lateral acceleration in the pilot. Do this by encasing the pilot's compartment in a rotating sphere, that always rotates so the pilot is sitting upright relative to the acceleration. If you center the pilot's head in the sphere, you might also reduce motion sickness.
• Use compression suits like those fighter pilots use. These compress the lower body during high-G maneuvers to prevent all the blood moving downwards. Ideally, you'd put the entire pilot in some sort of skin-suit which can compress and release on digital command.
• Drugs and external blood oxygenation can help. Dimenhydrinate or brand name Dramamine can reduce motion sickness and nausea, which will probably be important, but there are probably more drugs out there that could be useful to maintain consciousness or increase alertness. Additionally, an external-blood oxygenation machine can extract and insert blood intravenously to the pilot who might have difficulties breathing at high-g levels.
• Liquid breathing is a possibility, and already works today (it just feels like being permanently waterboarded though) and would help prevent your lungs from being crushed. Unfortunately, it also adds a lot of inertia to the body, which could be dangerous in high-jerk scenarios.

Answer 2

Other than not actually being in the pilot seat and doing it remotely i.e. from another location? Not much.

The key problem is that we long ago reached the limits of what pilots can take in terms of G forces and still make an active contribution to flying the machine. And this limit is way below the structural integrity limits modern material science has let us build into aircraft and other machines. Pilots with the best available g suit? Can sustain 8 or 9 Gs for short periods. Modern carbon fiber/metal alloy and other high tech materials in an airplane? Can endure something like twice that amount of G-force (or more) before they reach their 'fail points'. I'd have to find the exact figures but they're available on the net somewhere if you do a little digging).

All of which means an unmanned plane can theoretically dance rings around a manned one all day long and not get 'tired' from pulling high Gs. In fact although air forces all over the world will fight the idea it looks like the days of the 'Top Guns' is drawing to a close and drones will rule the skies.

Sorry if its not what you want to hear. You may have to go with some kind of SF gel or liquid life support tank after all.

Answer 3

Rotate the pilot to compensate for high G.

The problem with high G maneuvers is that the heart cannot move arterial blood up to the brain against the acceleration and the pilot blacks out. If you put the pilot head down then arterial blood gets there fine but cannot get back to the body through the veins, which rely largely on gravity.

Spinning the pilot cancels these out. On the down spin the pilot gets blood to the brain. Coming back up drains the blood from the brain. The action of the heart is augmented by the Gforces. Really it is not a steady spin but a fast rotation to head down, then back up, then head down etc. Ideally rotation to move blood to head has the feet at the center of rotation, and rotation to move blood out of the head has the head at the center of rotation, to maximize centrifugal forces moving the blood where you want it.

Of course the spin must align with the Gforces but this is easily done; the pilot seat is mounted on gimbals and spin is according to an accelerometer that detects forces on the pilot.

What, your pilot says the spin chair is icky? That he feels noshus in the spin chair? Did you tell this pilot what this mission entailed?

Dutch you can go ahead and patent this. But I want a Tshirt out of the deal.

Answer 4

1. AI in the pilot seat

2. teleoperation with ansible link

3. the "Ubik spray" - lengthens indefinitely the half-life state of otherwise a dead and frozen solid pilot, encased in an indestructible carbonite cocoon and neurolinked to the vehicle/ship command (my humble apologies, Master, for playing with your toys. No disrespect meant)

4. transhuman in the pilot seat - a former human mind (not the brain) - copy/pasted and operating on a cyber substrate, integrated with the vehicle/ship commands

5. "the instant medusa" device - puts the pilot in a (cryo?)statis the moment the acceleration passes over 3g and releases it when it gets back. Disadvantage: can't chain humongous-g maneuvers

6. "the squash machine" - deforms the metric of the space the pilot occupies so that the height of the pilot becomes negligible, and also negligible effort of the pilot's heart to pump blood (like... really?)

_{God, it's so good when you can let science-based aside and handwave a storm of plausible technologies without conjuring magic}

Answer 5

In addition to other good answers:

1. More-than-human pilots designed specifically for piloting
   1.1. Biologically advanced pilots with more powerful circulatory system (probably duplicated), muscles and probably skeleton. It could be done via: surgical intervention (less likely), specific breed of humans or genetic modification for each pilot (more favorable for me).
   1.2. Technologically advanced pilots: implants that help and/or duplicate heart, muscles and nerves/reaction.
2. Handwaved gravity compensator. There is no description how it works. This black box just works.
3. Special drugs which intensify almost anything needed for piloting at high G. There are drawback: each drug intake reduces life for N years. Another drawback: pilot could die immediately with some probability.

Answer 6

Have a rotating chair.

Humans can take acceleration pretty well when it's in the direction they're facing. Have a chair that automatically rotates them with the vehicle, so they're always facing forward.

Answer 7

It's been a while. whew. In addition to being place inside a gyroscope to cancel outside to side acceleration and jerk, as in addition allowing for perpetually lying flat, that being what covers die to the side acceleration as Willk.....

Arterial pumps

With the said arteries being pumped by mechanically enhanced capillary actions, these falling into two families, those being arterial pumps, and literally just replacing the heart with a mechanical heart.

The first, more original, and probably a bit less practical, would be arterial pumps. The capillary action by which blood is squeezed through veins being made more able to convey blood under stress, the natural squeezing and compressing of the veins literally being made stronger and able to convey more blood, with the means of the casings function being something that's plausible enough to not cover.

The second, the significantly less original one, which also happens to be more practical would be the replacement of the largest arterial pump, the heart, being replaced with a better performing mechanical one. This allowing for continuous blood flow to the brain and the body when under high g stress, that being the effect on the human body with regards to high g forces main concern.

Answer 8

Taking the modern-day safety features to their extreme

The things that really damage you with G forces are your blood and organs being pulled inside your body. With collisions, the sudden change in direction can cause your brain to push against the inside of your skull. Pressurized suits can help keep your blood flowing at higher G forces but will not help with your brain rattling inside your skull.

The way modern day cars deal with this is through crumple zones. These are parts of the car designed to fail during a crash in such a way that they extend the length of the crash. A longer crash means a longer duration over which your forward motion comes to a halt, meaning a less intense G force.

On top of that, cars use airbags to slow down your body as it moves forward and giving you a softer surface to crash into.

Taking these two ideas to the extreme, I can imagine that a driver who expects to crash a dozen times in a race would have a dozen permanent airbags surrounding them, making sure they are surrounded by soft surfaces. And their car might have several break-away pieces on the exterior that each serve to soften one or two hits before being discarded.

They should be wearing a flight suit, to keep their blood flowing even at higher G's. And as for the brain rattling... I don't think any modern technology will help. Modern-day professional athletes often retire early due to brain trauma (Boxing and Football especially). If you're dipping into Sci-Fi or fantasy, you can invent some device to solve this issue.

Answer 9

Neutron stars!

This idea is a bit on the futuristic side, but assuming a civilization has neutron star material available to them, this idea would work. Since general relativity tells us that gravity and acceleration are equivalent, putting a piece of a neutron star in front of the pilot when they're accelerating effectively cancels out the g-force, and provided with enough mass, would make almost any acceleration speed possible. The piece of neutron star is rotated to the direction that the pilot is accelerated, and in order to compensate for different accelerations (or none at all), the piece can be moved back in forth to increase or decrease the gravitational field strength on the pilot, which is the amount of g-force gravity can provide. This method will be less effective on up/down accelerations, because the field strength will vary more from the head to the feet, but considering that all other methods aren't even attempting to have an equal force over the body, I think that this in an excellent method. You can be flying at over 200G, and feel effectively weightless! Now all we need is to go find that piece of neutron star...