I'm Rufus Griscoom and this is the next big idea.

Today, human life expectancy doubled in the last century.

Can we do it again in the next 100 years?

On the 10th of December of 1954, I was the volunteer human subject for an experiment

in which I rode a rocket sled from a standing start to 632 miles an hour in 2800 feet.

I came to a complete stop in one and four tenths second.

That's Colonel John Stapp, a man who looks as unassuming as he sounds.

Big forehead, horned rim glasses, chubby cheeks, about the last guy you'd expect to hold

the title of Fastest Man on Earth.

A title he claimed on the 10th of December 1954, on a strip of railroad track sliced through

barren desert in New Mexico.

Mounted on that track was a makeshift contraption called Sonic Wind One.

It looked like a parade float with a lone chair made out of metal pipes and instead of

crept streamers billowing off the back, there were nine rockets.

They gave the Sonic Wind its other name, Rocket Sled.

Stapp, who had both an MD and a PhD, had been riding these jet-powered death traps for years.

It was part of his quest to solve what he considered to be the most vexing question posed by his

era's technological advancements.

What happens to a human body when it goes from 100 miles an hour to a dead halt in a matter

of seconds?

This question Stapp realized was quite literally a matter of life and death.

At the time the military believed it was impossible to survive more than 18 G's, but Stapp said

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