Died at age 73. He was a space scientist.
Alamogordo Daily News from Alamogordo, New Mexico ...
Handsome and witty Dr. von Beckh is a world traveler... Dr Harald J von Beckh poses with his wife, Nina, and their three daughters, Isabel ...
Government documents created in 1963 show him as having changed his name from "Harald Juan Albrecht von Beckh Widmanstetter" to "Harold John von Beckh".
By the middle of 1958 the Aeromedical Field Laboratory of the Air Force Missile Development Center, at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, had won wide public and scientific attention with its research programs in biodynamics and space biology. Such achievements as the rocket-sled experiments of Col. (Dr.) John Paul Stapp, the series of animal and human balloon flights under the immediate direction of Lt. Col. (Dr.) David G. Simons, and the subgravity studies of Capt. (Dr.) Grover J. Schock and Dr. Harald J. von Beckh had established the Holloman laboratory as a small but essential contributor to the nation's progress in aerospace medicine. Since mid-1958, it has made fewer headlines, because the bulk of its work has been either less spectacular or else more sensitive from an information standpoint. But its total contribution certainly has not been less; indeed, the laboratory's workload, staff, and technical facilities have noticeably expanded during the last two years, and they are still expanding.
NASA's History Office, Parts 3-5:
A sudden burst of subgravity flights in the United States was followed by a period of relative inactivity during 1952-1954. Meanwhile, related experiments were being conducted during these same years in Argentina by the Austrian-born scientist Dr. Harald J. A. von Beckh, who had left Germany for South America shortly after the war. Von Beckh introduced still another animal to the menagerie of subgravity test subjects, the South American water turtle. He had one turtle whose vestibular function had been injured accidentally; and he found that this turtle showed much better coordination and orientation during an aircraft subgravity flight than his normal companions. Like the mouse that had a special vestibular operation before going up in the second aeromedical Aerobee, the turtle had apparently learned to compensate visually for the lack of normal gravitational cues. Even the normal turtles, however, gradually improved their performance after a sufficient number of flights.
In his turtle experiments, Von Beckh achieved subgravity exposures up to seven seconds by means of vertical dives. Subsequently he, too, adopted the parabolic flight pattern and shifted from turtles to human subjects. The latter submitted to a series of eye-hand coordination tests, in which they showed the familiar tendency to overreach during subgravity but resembled Von Beckh's turtles in their capacity to improve with later flights. Von Beckh was also much interested to observe that when the plane entered its subgravity arc by a maneuver causing high acceleration forces, the recovery from acceleration-induced blackout took appreciably longer than usual.11 In a sense this foreshadowed the experience of the Russian satellite dog, and suggested a special topic for further experimentation. However, Von Beckh cut short his stay in Argentina to take a position in the United States with the Human Factors Division of the Martin Company. Later still, in January 1958, he joined the staff of the Air Force Missile Development Center's Aeromedical Field Laboratory. There he assumed direction of the present subgravity program which had been started--perhaps it would be better to say reactivated--in 1954.
With Otto Winzen:
After a number of balloon bursts and weather difficulties, the first wholly successful test took place on 29 January 1958, when the Convair seat was dropped from 85,000 feet and accelerated by free fall in 37.12 seconds to a maximum speed of .98 mach, at which point it began to slow down from air resistance. G-forces, oscillations, and other free-fall characteristics were studied in this carefully-instrumented introductory experiment. According to project plans, test were to be staged later on with high-velocity rocket test vehicles, in order to simulate and study different re-entry curves.
A scientist who was assigned until recently to the Space Biology Branch, Dr. Harald J. von Beckh, has been working intermittently on a device of his own for protection against g-forces. Von Beckh came to Holloman as task scientist for subgravity studies, and within the general field of subgravity research he was especially interested in the effect of weightlessness immediately preceded or followed by relatively high g-forces, as in rocket take-off and re-entry. His experimentation along these lines has been discussed in another monograph of this series.25 At the same time, however, he has conceived an "anti-g capsul" which could give protection not by water immersion but by automatically positioning the body at all times to receive g-forces transversely, in which case human tolerance levels are invariably highest. Dr. von Beckh has proposed that this system be used in developing a capsule for escape from aircraft, but it is also applicable I for use in space vehicles.
Von Beckh has already tested the basic features of his idea in animal experiments at Holloman. In the early part of 1958, he exposed mice to high g-forces on two small materiel centrifuges and established that their tolerance was substantially increased by attaching them to a swinging anti-g platform of his own making. Accelerative stress in a direction longitudinal [73] to the body was negligible, since the platform automatically positioned the mice to receive their g's transversely. Though dizzy from spinning at the end of the run, the mice survived exposure to 400 g's for almost fifteen seconds.
A slightly different form of Dr. von Beckh's device has produced similar results (though at much lower g-levels) with rats on the short Daisy Track,28 which is discussed in the following section of this monograph. Still another variation has even been used operationally, in rocket experiments with animal subjects. This was a purpose for which Von Beckh predicted that his device would prove extremely helpful, since...
... during the re-entry phase, during ejection from the nose cone and especially during uncontrolled parts of the trajectory, which might be caused by imperfections of the automatic guidance system, the subject would be exposed to severe accelerations with continuously varying direction, intensity, and rate of onset.
Accordingly, Dr. von Beckh's principle was frankly copied in the experiment that sent three ill-fated mice aloft in three Thor-Able missiles from the Air Force Missile Test Center, Florida, in the course of 1958. Two of Von Beckh's Holloman colleagues, Captain (Doctor) Grover J. D. Schock and Technical Sergeant Edward C. Dittmer, were even present at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in Los Angeles, helping project scientists to incorporate the anti-g device as well as giving advice on environmental control problems for the Thor-Able mouse compartment.30 Alas, all the mice were lost at sea, so that there is no way of knowing how well the anti-g device functioned in this case.
Hubertus Strughold Award:
The Hubertus Strughold Award was established by the Space Medicine Branch, known today as the Space Medicine Association, a member organization of the Aerospace Medical Association. In 1962 the Award was established in honor of Dr. Hubertus Strughold, also known as “The Father of Space Medicine”. The award was presented every year from 1963 through 2012 to a Space Medicine Branch member for outstanding contributions in applications and research in the field of space-related medical research.
Awardees
1976 Harald J. von Beckh
Alamogordo Daily News from Alamogordo, New Mexico ...
Handsome and witty Dr. von Beckh is a world traveler... Dr Harald J von Beckh poses with his wife, Nina, and their three daughters, Isabel ...
Government documents created in 1963 show him as having changed his name from "Harald Juan Albrecht von Beckh Widmanstetter" to "Harold John von Beckh".
By the middle of 1958 the Aeromedical Field Laboratory of the Air Force Missile Development Center, at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, had won wide public and scientific attention with its research programs in biodynamics and space biology. Such achievements as the rocket-sled experiments of Col. (Dr.) John Paul Stapp, the series of animal and human balloon flights under the immediate direction of Lt. Col. (Dr.) David G. Simons, and the subgravity studies of Capt. (Dr.) Grover J. Schock and Dr. Harald J. von Beckh had established the Holloman laboratory as a small but essential contributor to the nation's progress in aerospace medicine. Since mid-1958, it has made fewer headlines, because the bulk of its work has been either less spectacular or else more sensitive from an information standpoint. But its total contribution certainly has not been less; indeed, the laboratory's workload, staff, and technical facilities have noticeably expanded during the last two years, and they are still expanding.
NASA's History Office, Parts 3-5:
A sudden burst of subgravity flights in the United States was followed by a period of relative inactivity during 1952-1954. Meanwhile, related experiments were being conducted during these same years in Argentina by the Austrian-born scientist Dr. Harald J. A. von Beckh, who had left Germany for South America shortly after the war. Von Beckh introduced still another animal to the menagerie of subgravity test subjects, the South American water turtle. He had one turtle whose vestibular function had been injured accidentally; and he found that this turtle showed much better coordination and orientation during an aircraft subgravity flight than his normal companions. Like the mouse that had a special vestibular operation before going up in the second aeromedical Aerobee, the turtle had apparently learned to compensate visually for the lack of normal gravitational cues. Even the normal turtles, however, gradually improved their performance after a sufficient number of flights.
In his turtle experiments, Von Beckh achieved subgravity exposures up to seven seconds by means of vertical dives. Subsequently he, too, adopted the parabolic flight pattern and shifted from turtles to human subjects. The latter submitted to a series of eye-hand coordination tests, in which they showed the familiar tendency to overreach during subgravity but resembled Von Beckh's turtles in their capacity to improve with later flights. Von Beckh was also much interested to observe that when the plane entered its subgravity arc by a maneuver causing high acceleration forces, the recovery from acceleration-induced blackout took appreciably longer than usual.11 In a sense this foreshadowed the experience of the Russian satellite dog, and suggested a special topic for further experimentation. However, Von Beckh cut short his stay in Argentina to take a position in the United States with the Human Factors Division of the Martin Company. Later still, in January 1958, he joined the staff of the Air Force Missile Development Center's Aeromedical Field Laboratory. There he assumed direction of the present subgravity program which had been started--perhaps it would be better to say reactivated--in 1954.
With Otto Winzen:
After a number of balloon bursts and weather difficulties, the first wholly successful test took place on 29 January 1958, when the Convair seat was dropped from 85,000 feet and accelerated by free fall in 37.12 seconds to a maximum speed of .98 mach, at which point it began to slow down from air resistance. G-forces, oscillations, and other free-fall characteristics were studied in this carefully-instrumented introductory experiment. According to project plans, test were to be staged later on with high-velocity rocket test vehicles, in order to simulate and study different re-entry curves.
A scientist who was assigned until recently to the Space Biology Branch, Dr. Harald J. von Beckh, has been working intermittently on a device of his own for protection against g-forces. Von Beckh came to Holloman as task scientist for subgravity studies, and within the general field of subgravity research he was especially interested in the effect of weightlessness immediately preceded or followed by relatively high g-forces, as in rocket take-off and re-entry. His experimentation along these lines has been discussed in another monograph of this series.25 At the same time, however, he has conceived an "anti-g capsul" which could give protection not by water immersion but by automatically positioning the body at all times to receive g-forces transversely, in which case human tolerance levels are invariably highest. Dr. von Beckh has proposed that this system be used in developing a capsule for escape from aircraft, but it is also applicable I for use in space vehicles.
Von Beckh has already tested the basic features of his idea in animal experiments at Holloman. In the early part of 1958, he exposed mice to high g-forces on two small materiel centrifuges and established that their tolerance was substantially increased by attaching them to a swinging anti-g platform of his own making. Accelerative stress in a direction longitudinal [73] to the body was negligible, since the platform automatically positioned the mice to receive their g's transversely. Though dizzy from spinning at the end of the run, the mice survived exposure to 400 g's for almost fifteen seconds.
A slightly different form of Dr. von Beckh's device has produced similar results (though at much lower g-levels) with rats on the short Daisy Track,28 which is discussed in the following section of this monograph. Still another variation has even been used operationally, in rocket experiments with animal subjects. This was a purpose for which Von Beckh predicted that his device would prove extremely helpful, since...
... during the re-entry phase, during ejection from the nose cone and especially during uncontrolled parts of the trajectory, which might be caused by imperfections of the automatic guidance system, the subject would be exposed to severe accelerations with continuously varying direction, intensity, and rate of onset.
Accordingly, Dr. von Beckh's principle was frankly copied in the experiment that sent three ill-fated mice aloft in three Thor-Able missiles from the Air Force Missile Test Center, Florida, in the course of 1958. Two of Von Beckh's Holloman colleagues, Captain (Doctor) Grover J. D. Schock and Technical Sergeant Edward C. Dittmer, were even present at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in Los Angeles, helping project scientists to incorporate the anti-g device as well as giving advice on environmental control problems for the Thor-Able mouse compartment.30 Alas, all the mice were lost at sea, so that there is no way of knowing how well the anti-g device functioned in this case.
Hubertus Strughold Award:
The Hubertus Strughold Award was established by the Space Medicine Branch, known today as the Space Medicine Association, a member organization of the Aerospace Medical Association. In 1962 the Award was established in honor of Dr. Hubertus Strughold, also known as “The Father of Space Medicine”. The award was presented every year from 1963 through 2012 to a Space Medicine Branch member for outstanding contributions in applications and research in the field of space-related medical research.
Awardees
1976 Harald J. von Beckh
Died at age 73. He was a space scientist.
Alamogordo Daily News from Alamogordo, New Mexico ...
Handsome and witty Dr. von Beckh is a world traveler... Dr Harald J von Beckh poses with his wife, Nina, and their three daughters, Isabel ...
Government documents created in 1963 show him as having changed his name from "Harald Juan Albrecht von Beckh Widmanstetter" to "Harold John von Beckh".
By the middle of 1958 the Aeromedical Field Laboratory of the Air Force Missile Development Center, at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, had won wide public and scientific attention with its research programs in biodynamics and space biology. Such achievements as the rocket-sled experiments of Col. (Dr.) John Paul Stapp, the series of animal and human balloon flights under the immediate direction of Lt. Col. (Dr.) David G. Simons, and the subgravity studies of Capt. (Dr.) Grover J. Schock and Dr. Harald J. von Beckh had established the Holloman laboratory as a small but essential contributor to the nation's progress in aerospace medicine. Since mid-1958, it has made fewer headlines, because the bulk of its work has been either less spectacular or else more sensitive from an information standpoint. But its total contribution certainly has not been less; indeed, the laboratory's workload, staff, and technical facilities have noticeably expanded during the last two years, and they are still expanding.
NASA's History Office, Parts 3-5:
A sudden burst of subgravity flights in the United States was followed by a period of relative inactivity during 1952-1954. Meanwhile, related experiments were being conducted during these same years in Argentina by the Austrian-born scientist Dr. Harald J. A. von Beckh, who had left Germany for South America shortly after the war. Von Beckh introduced still another animal to the menagerie of subgravity test subjects, the South American water turtle. He had one turtle whose vestibular function had been injured accidentally; and he found that this turtle showed much better coordination and orientation during an aircraft subgravity flight than his normal companions. Like the mouse that had a special vestibular operation before going up in the second aeromedical Aerobee, the turtle had apparently learned to compensate visually for the lack of normal gravitational cues. Even the normal turtles, however, gradually improved their performance after a sufficient number of flights.
In his turtle experiments, Von Beckh achieved subgravity exposures up to seven seconds by means of vertical dives. Subsequently he, too, adopted the parabolic flight pattern and shifted from turtles to human subjects. The latter submitted to a series of eye-hand coordination tests, in which they showed the familiar tendency to overreach during subgravity but resembled Von Beckh's turtles in their capacity to improve with later flights. Von Beckh was also much interested to observe that when the plane entered its subgravity arc by a maneuver causing high acceleration forces, the recovery from acceleration-induced blackout took appreciably longer than usual.11 In a sense this foreshadowed the experience of the Russian satellite dog, and suggested a special topic for further experimentation. However, Von Beckh cut short his stay in Argentina to take a position in the United States with the Human Factors Division of the Martin Company. Later still, in January 1958, he joined the staff of the Air Force Missile Development Center's Aeromedical Field Laboratory. There he assumed direction of the present subgravity program which had been started--perhaps it would be better to say reactivated--in 1954.
With Otto Winzen:
After a number of balloon bursts and weather difficulties, the first wholly successful test took place on 29 January 1958, when the Convair seat was dropped from 85,000 feet and accelerated by free fall in 37.12 seconds to a maximum speed of .98 mach, at which point it began to slow down from air resistance. G-forces, oscillations, and other free-fall characteristics were studied in this carefully-instrumented introductory experiment. According to project plans, test were to be staged later on with high-velocity rocket test vehicles, in order to simulate and study different re-entry curves.
A scientist who was assigned until recently to the Space Biology Branch, Dr. Harald J. von Beckh, has been working intermittently on a device of his own for protection against g-forces. Von Beckh came to Holloman as task scientist for subgravity studies, and within the general field of subgravity research he was especially interested in the effect of weightlessness immediately preceded or followed by relatively high g-forces, as in rocket take-off and re-entry. His experimentation along these lines has been discussed in another monograph of this series.25 At the same time, however, he has conceived an "anti-g capsul" which could give protection not by water immersion but by automatically positioning the body at all times to receive g-forces transversely, in which case human tolerance levels are invariably highest. Dr. von Beckh has proposed that this system be used in developing a capsule for escape from aircraft, but it is also applicable I for use in space vehicles.
Von Beckh has already tested the basic features of his idea in animal experiments at Holloman. In the early part of 1958, he exposed mice to high g-forces on two small materiel centrifuges and established that their tolerance was substantially increased by attaching them to a swinging anti-g platform of his own making. Accelerative stress in a direction longitudinal [73] to the body was negligible, since the platform automatically positioned the mice to receive their g's transversely. Though dizzy from spinning at the end of the run, the mice survived exposure to 400 g's for almost fifteen seconds.
A slightly different form of Dr. von Beckh's device has produced similar results (though at much lower g-levels) with rats on the short Daisy Track,28 which is discussed in the following section of this monograph. Still another variation has even been used operationally, in rocket experiments with animal subjects. This was a purpose for which Von Beckh predicted that his device would prove extremely helpful, since...
... during the re-entry phase, during ejection from the nose cone and especially during uncontrolled parts of the trajectory, which might be caused by imperfections of the automatic guidance system, the subject would be exposed to severe accelerations with continuously varying direction, intensity, and rate of onset.
Accordingly, Dr. von Beckh's principle was frankly copied in the experiment that sent three ill-fated mice aloft in three Thor-Able missiles from the Air Force Missile Test Center, Florida, in the course of 1958. Two of Von Beckh's Holloman colleagues, Captain (Doctor) Grover J. D. Schock and Technical Sergeant Edward C. Dittmer, were even present at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in Los Angeles, helping project scientists to incorporate the anti-g device as well as giving advice on environmental control problems for the Thor-Able mouse compartment.30 Alas, all the mice were lost at sea, so that there is no way of knowing how well the anti-g device functioned in this case.
Hubertus Strughold Award:
The Hubertus Strughold Award was established by the Space Medicine Branch, known today as the Space Medicine Association, a member organization of the Aerospace Medical Association. In 1962 the Award was established in honor of Dr. Hubertus Strughold, also known as “The Father of Space Medicine”. The award was presented every year from 1963 through 2012 to a Space Medicine Branch member for outstanding contributions in applications and research in the field of space-related medical research.
Awardees
1976 Harald J. von Beckh
Alamogordo Daily News from Alamogordo, New Mexico ...
Handsome and witty Dr. von Beckh is a world traveler... Dr Harald J von Beckh poses with his wife, Nina, and their three daughters, Isabel ...
Government documents created in 1963 show him as having changed his name from "Harald Juan Albrecht von Beckh Widmanstetter" to "Harold John von Beckh".
By the middle of 1958 the Aeromedical Field Laboratory of the Air Force Missile Development Center, at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, had won wide public and scientific attention with its research programs in biodynamics and space biology. Such achievements as the rocket-sled experiments of Col. (Dr.) John Paul Stapp, the series of animal and human balloon flights under the immediate direction of Lt. Col. (Dr.) David G. Simons, and the subgravity studies of Capt. (Dr.) Grover J. Schock and Dr. Harald J. von Beckh had established the Holloman laboratory as a small but essential contributor to the nation's progress in aerospace medicine. Since mid-1958, it has made fewer headlines, because the bulk of its work has been either less spectacular or else more sensitive from an information standpoint. But its total contribution certainly has not been less; indeed, the laboratory's workload, staff, and technical facilities have noticeably expanded during the last two years, and they are still expanding.
NASA's History Office, Parts 3-5:
A sudden burst of subgravity flights in the United States was followed by a period of relative inactivity during 1952-1954. Meanwhile, related experiments were being conducted during these same years in Argentina by the Austrian-born scientist Dr. Harald J. A. von Beckh, who had left Germany for South America shortly after the war. Von Beckh introduced still another animal to the menagerie of subgravity test subjects, the South American water turtle. He had one turtle whose vestibular function had been injured accidentally; and he found that this turtle showed much better coordination and orientation during an aircraft subgravity flight than his normal companions. Like the mouse that had a special vestibular operation before going up in the second aeromedical Aerobee, the turtle had apparently learned to compensate visually for the lack of normal gravitational cues. Even the normal turtles, however, gradually improved their performance after a sufficient number of flights.
In his turtle experiments, Von Beckh achieved subgravity exposures up to seven seconds by means of vertical dives. Subsequently he, too, adopted the parabolic flight pattern and shifted from turtles to human subjects. The latter submitted to a series of eye-hand coordination tests, in which they showed the familiar tendency to overreach during subgravity but resembled Von Beckh's turtles in their capacity to improve with later flights. Von Beckh was also much interested to observe that when the plane entered its subgravity arc by a maneuver causing high acceleration forces, the recovery from acceleration-induced blackout took appreciably longer than usual.11 In a sense this foreshadowed the experience of the Russian satellite dog, and suggested a special topic for further experimentation. However, Von Beckh cut short his stay in Argentina to take a position in the United States with the Human Factors Division of the Martin Company. Later still, in January 1958, he joined the staff of the Air Force Missile Development Center's Aeromedical Field Laboratory. There he assumed direction of the present subgravity program which had been started--perhaps it would be better to say reactivated--in 1954.
With Otto Winzen:
After a number of balloon bursts and weather difficulties, the first wholly successful test took place on 29 January 1958, when the Convair seat was dropped from 85,000 feet and accelerated by free fall in 37.12 seconds to a maximum speed of .98 mach, at which point it began to slow down from air resistance. G-forces, oscillations, and other free-fall characteristics were studied in this carefully-instrumented introductory experiment. According to project plans, test were to be staged later on with high-velocity rocket test vehicles, in order to simulate and study different re-entry curves.
A scientist who was assigned until recently to the Space Biology Branch, Dr. Harald J. von Beckh, has been working intermittently on a device of his own for protection against g-forces. Von Beckh came to Holloman as task scientist for subgravity studies, and within the general field of subgravity research he was especially interested in the effect of weightlessness immediately preceded or followed by relatively high g-forces, as in rocket take-off and re-entry. His experimentation along these lines has been discussed in another monograph of this series.25 At the same time, however, he has conceived an "anti-g capsul" which could give protection not by water immersion but by automatically positioning the body at all times to receive g-forces transversely, in which case human tolerance levels are invariably highest. Dr. von Beckh has proposed that this system be used in developing a capsule for escape from aircraft, but it is also applicable I for use in space vehicles.
Von Beckh has already tested the basic features of his idea in animal experiments at Holloman. In the early part of 1958, he exposed mice to high g-forces on two small materiel centrifuges and established that their tolerance was substantially increased by attaching them to a swinging anti-g platform of his own making. Accelerative stress in a direction longitudinal [73] to the body was negligible, since the platform automatically positioned the mice to receive their g's transversely. Though dizzy from spinning at the end of the run, the mice survived exposure to 400 g's for almost fifteen seconds.
A slightly different form of Dr. von Beckh's device has produced similar results (though at much lower g-levels) with rats on the short Daisy Track,28 which is discussed in the following section of this monograph. Still another variation has even been used operationally, in rocket experiments with animal subjects. This was a purpose for which Von Beckh predicted that his device would prove extremely helpful, since...
... during the re-entry phase, during ejection from the nose cone and especially during uncontrolled parts of the trajectory, which might be caused by imperfections of the automatic guidance system, the subject would be exposed to severe accelerations with continuously varying direction, intensity, and rate of onset.
Accordingly, Dr. von Beckh's principle was frankly copied in the experiment that sent three ill-fated mice aloft in three Thor-Able missiles from the Air Force Missile Test Center, Florida, in the course of 1958. Two of Von Beckh's Holloman colleagues, Captain (Doctor) Grover J. D. Schock and Technical Sergeant Edward C. Dittmer, were even present at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in Los Angeles, helping project scientists to incorporate the anti-g device as well as giving advice on environmental control problems for the Thor-Able mouse compartment.30 Alas, all the mice were lost at sea, so that there is no way of knowing how well the anti-g device functioned in this case.
Hubertus Strughold Award:
The Hubertus Strughold Award was established by the Space Medicine Branch, known today as the Space Medicine Association, a member organization of the Aerospace Medical Association. In 1962 the Award was established in honor of Dr. Hubertus Strughold, also known as “The Father of Space Medicine”. The award was presented every year from 1963 through 2012 to a Space Medicine Branch member for outstanding contributions in applications and research in the field of space-related medical research.
Awardees
1976 Harald J. von Beckh
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Advertisement
