The comments from different people who were allegedly involved in the project seem to contradict each other. So I did a bit of hunting to find out what injuries the bears suffered, if any, and what their fate was.

I've managed to find the "white paper" referenced by one of the commenters: Impact Acceleration Stress, 1961 [1]. There is also a feel-good propaganda movie that you can watch, detailing the program while missing out that they killed the bears [2], instead saying that they went under a "customary detailed examination".

One bear died while ejecting, as it was suffering from hydrocephalus (build up of spinal fluid in the brain) before flying, and with the added stress of the ejection must have caused terminal brain injuries. One bear suffered laceration to the liver, attributed to being over-sedated. At least one bear suffered whiplash and a fractured pelvis.

It doesn't specify exactly how many bears were used in testing, but I counted 7 from the tests they did (6 ejecting from the jet, one on a sled), plus one chimpanzee ejected form the jet. I highly doubt there were hundreds of bears, they cannot have been cheap to acquire or easy to keep.

All the animal test subjects were killed and autopsied afterwards.

Robert Sudderth, the Project Officer that commented, corroborates this paper, saying that the bears were not used a second time. John H Watson says that no bears were injured, but that could be just that he wasn't told.

[1] https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA92&dq...

[2] https://youtu.be/-KLnqorLgDM

> It doesn't specify exactly how many bears were used in testing, but I counted 7 from the tests they did (6 ejecting from the jet, one on a sled), plus one chimpanzee ejected form the jet. I highly doubt there were hundreds of bears, they cannot have been cheap to acquire or easy to keep.

The number of seven bears fits the comment by Robert Sudderth but isn't a direct contradiction of the other comment by Lauren Anderson that says:

> 'Several hundred' bears were acquired for this purpose, all of which were destroyed 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'.

'Several hundred' and 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts' are obviously quotes from the mentioned whitepaper and both make sense. The part between them is in my opinion a misinterpretation by the commenter. Given that the bears had to fulfill some obvious requirements (size and weight) and a lot of not so obvious ones (healthy, no previous injuries, etc.), it wouldn't surprise me if they acquired and examined several hundred bears for the project but ended up using only a few.

I believe the paper you linked to is not the one from the comment above because I couldn't find the quotes. It's also probably not the one describing the experiments in the original post. The original post talks about "The first live, inflight supersonic test of the escape capsule [which] took place on March 21, 1962". The experiments in the paper you linked took place in 1961 or before. The data it contains regarding the bears are measurements of drop test from various heights (9'9" to 14') and not data from in flight tests.

Those were innovative ejection seats, but sadly, similar style 'capsule' ejection seats failed during the ultimate test during the prototype XB-70 Valkyrie accident. [0]

In that case, the centrifugal forces generated by the aircraft going into a spin meant that the second pilot, Carl Cross, waited just a few seconds too long to initiate the ejection sequence, and his seat was unable to be retracted into the capsule for ejection, so he ended up riding the aircraft all the way to ground impact.

[0] - https://tacairnet.com/2014/10/27/crash-of-the-valkyrie/

The "Wings Over The Rockies" museum in Denver, CO, has one of these escape capsules, plus a little display about development and testing. The display does mention that they used bears in testing of the capsules.

If you're at all interested in military or naval aviation, you should visit Wings Over the Rockies. It's like nothing else.

Wow, do yourself a favor and read the comments section since the Project Officer, tracking antenna designer, a co-worker of one of the engineers, and a trajectory dynamics engineer for General Dynamics. They all dispute the one comment saying the bears were hurt / destroyed although the chimpanzee was slightly injured.

It's bit controversial anyway cause another comment tells a different story altogether:

'''According to the government white paper on the subject all bears were destroyed shortly on return to base. All but the last three bears suffered serious internal injuries and multiple broken bones. 'Several hundred' bears were acquired for this purpose, all of which were destroyed 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'.'''

That’s the comment I referenced, but notice the white paper is never linked or even titled.

I found the paper: Impact Acceleration Stress. 1962

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA92&dq...

None of the bears suffered serious injuries beyond broken bones and whiplash, but they were killed and autopsied afterwards. The paper doesn't explicitly state how many bears were used, and I think hundreds might be an exaggeration, but at least a couple of dozen bears were used based on the number of tests run.

Respectfully, what's your thinking for why hundreds seems like an exaggeration and is probably dozens instead?

There were only 7 tests done using bears, and one using a chimp.

It seems like it would be prohibitively difficult to source several hundred bears when you only plan on doing a few tests. You have to buy them and then you need to find somewhere to put them. Even if money wasn't an issue (and likely wouldn't be on those Cold War budgets), just the logistics of the problem would make it unlikely they'd source more bears than they needed.

Aha, yes that does make hundreds seem absurd.

That one comment is really out of line with what I know about ejection seat testing. Did they use bears? Yes. Hundreds of bears? No. The same bears hundreds of times? As the other comments said - they would have had to drug the bears to the point where the physio data was worthless.

The USAF museum in Dayton Ohio has one of the escape modules on display (I saw it back in 2004-ish).

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-...

There is a historical reenactment of this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfkNvOOiZ_8&feature=youtu.be...

did this have anything to do with the bear in the ejector pod in spaceballs?

Imagine being the guy trying to strap in a bear.

"Are you sure it's too drugged to move?"

"Yes"

"Its claw twitched... its humongous claw twitched."

"That's fine. Pick her up and strap her in."

It seems like this could have been a grizzly endeavor.

Humans need to have some fucking respect.

It's the reality of testing. You have no idea how many animals died to produce every drug you've ever taken:

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1676-5-horrifyin...

No kidding. If it weren't for the animals it'd be us.

It's always ironic to see animal rights advocates' responses when they are asked if they'd rather volunteer to be the research subjects instead. They are surprisingly reluctant...

This tends to make them ponder a bit more:

"If we hadn't experimented on animals, you might not even be alive today."

It was for us as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

> "If we hadn't experimented on animals, you might not even be alive today."

That might apply to some life-saving drugs.

Cosmetics and weapons are not medicines - far from it.

If it weren't for some weapons, you might not be alive today either.

If it weren't for some cosmetics, many of us might not be alive today either.

Survivor bias? If it weren't for some weapons, a lot of people might be alive today.

Claiming that weapons save more people that they kill is simply illogical.

Where exactly was that claim made?

> If it weren't for some weapons, you might not be alive today either.

...unless you are implying that this is about saving me personally at the expense of other people lives.

This is speciesism in its purest form. So if we took a Planet of the Apes style plot twist, and apes became the dominant life form on earth, I suppose you'd be OK with them strapping you in to some test where you will probably meet a horrible end, all so they can progress their technology?

A bear ain't going to treat you nearly as well when the tables are turned.

I don't know about that, a bear society that is capable of supersonic flight might have some different code of ethics.

This got a loud, hearty laugh out of me. Someone get this person a beer.

... that's really no excuse?

1. How many animals have humans driven to extinction now? Perhaps they would not be extinct were people to treat them with greater respect.

2. If you treat an animal with respect the tables will never have an opportunity to turn, because you won't be blatantly trespassing on it's turf.

Using animals as test subjects isn't really comparable in magnitude to the damage we do on a global scale to ecosystems, which is what is actually causing extinction

That we do even worse is really no excuse.

Who said an excuse is needed? That's what nature is. Species using other species for food, for starters...

It’s not an excuse. There are just way way way better things to focus our outrage

Which is a different name to "putting things in perspective", -- used to make it sound like a bad thing.

What if you are just out for a run?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=renTN4IlSjQ

This reeks of naturalistic fallacy. Humans are bad because we exploit animals. Yet, humans are animals, and this is what animals do given the chance. We don't need an excuse.

Just because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things doesn't mean we have to abandon all progress and be an agrarian society.

Can we improve? Sure. I don't like to see anything needlessly suffer, but a few bears being killed in the name of science is a drop in the bucket to other concerns.

> This reeks of naturalistic fallacy. Humans are bad because we exploit animals. Yet, humans are animals, and this is what animals do given the chance. We don't need an excuse.

> Just because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things doesn't mean we have to abandon all progress and be an agrarian society.

It's exactly because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things, that means that we should. The fact that you can think and reason about the fact that you're stealing from someone else, or otherwise harming something else, the fact that you are (hopefully) intelligent enough to think of a different way, means that you have a moral duty to be better than that.

You argue that I succumb to the naturalistic fallacy, and yet you are the one doing so. You argue that we do not need an excuse for our behaviour because we are animals, and it is natural for animals to exploit other animals.

In addition to that grave error, you're also making a complete false equivalency in equating "not using a random bear as a test pilot" with "abandoning all progress and becoming an agrarian society".

2. Pretty much all human buildings are on land that was previously occupied by animals and those animals are now excluded from those areas. Do you want to demolish human civilization and cut the population down to numbers small enough that we can all survive eating vegetables from places that animals can't reach?

Indeed. In fact, a bear is quite a bit more sturdy than a human, so the fact that one survived an ejection only means a human might have a chance; but it was to establish a possible upper limit.

Chances of bears testing humans in ejector seats are rather low. In spite of bears being massive and dangerous humans are far more dangerous to bears than the other way around, even before we start using them as test subjects for new technology.

Sure, they'd eat you for food / out of necessity. They wouldn't mutilate you just as an experiment though.

I don't care.

Well, the universe doesn't have any "respect" for anything.

Wow, ur 2 smart. Mind=blown!

They do. For human life.

Edited to clarify: that wasn't a criticism.

Go bears! ;)

They had cooler dreams about the future back then.

This is horrible science. A bear surviving an ejection is nothing like a human surviving an ejection.

Early this on, the process of building physically accurate "fake humans" was not really possible.

Bear tests were probably more an early proof of viability than anything else. The bears survived, proving that humans wouldn't be completely annihilated.

Animal testing cruelty wasn't really being thought about heavily in post WWII military aerospace development. It's unfortunate but a historical footnote reminding us of the importance of proper testing.

>Animal testing cruelty wasn't really being thought about heavily in post WWII military aerospace development

Considering that the endpoint is machines killing actual people, it would be the height of hypocrisy in my books for them to care about "animal testing cruelty".

I don't (reading modern past and foreseeable future), but if you subscribe to the idea of 'just war'[0] it would make sense.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

By "actual people" do you mean "who cares about animals dying in horrendous ways when people will be dying?"

More precisely, if a project is about making killing machines for people, that it might kill some animals to test them is the least of its moral problems.

Logging the max acceleration in x,y,z would have been better than throwing a bear out of plane. Knowing a bear survives is ridiculous and they knew it. Ethics are orthogonal, cadavers would have ben a better choice.

What can you compare that acceleration data to? Put a human on a shaker table and measure his brain damage? At some point you have to damage humans or animals to find out their limits.

You would now have numerical values to compare rather the MILSPEC 'dead_bear' units. Nowhere did I make an ethical argument against animal trials or say that we should do experimentation on humans. But launching bears out of an ejection seat was even stupid then.

Logging what with what, in 1962?

A pencil on a spring is enough to measure maximum acceleration, I'm sure by 62 they had something at least as sophisticated.

Imagine if they have the advanced capability of moving the paper under the pencil, they might get acceleration over time.

In 1962 they would have had multi-channel magentic tape (analog) recording. The first flight data recorders date to the early 1940s.

Fitting it in ejection seat might be another challenge but I'm sure they would have developed something before moving to live subjects.

Might these proto-engineers also harnessed radio waves to transport signals across the aether for a form of telemetry?

He meant actually put a piece of wood log inside the capsule and observe the marks on it after it returned to earth.

Sadly we weren't there to inform them of that /s

(Seriously, who said it has to be exactly "like" it? We use crash test dummies for testing car crash behavior, and they're nothing "like" humans either).

Crash test dummies are at least a standard.

Maybe people were misconstruing "horrible science" as something other than low quality science? HN while being a seething pit of criticality, it has a low tolerance of anything that questions science or the march of technology.

>Maybe people were misconstruing "horrible science" as something other than low quality science?

It would only be "low quality" if it didn't fit their purpose. Which was some rough estimate, not to get the final word of whether humans survive an ejection.

Eggs or feta would have been a better choice.

Only density wise. Eggs or feta don't have a heart, brain matter, muscles, bones and other such stuff they'd liked to see their response, one presumes.