This film shows rocket sled tests of aircraft components at the Holloman Air Force Base in the 1960s. An ejection seat test is shown. A lot of the footage is shot with high speed cameras, producing stunning slow motion footage of these rocket sleds.
The Holloman High Speed Test Track was originally 3,350 ft (1,021 m) long when initial construction was completed in August 1949. The first test performed at the HHSTT was the launching of the Northrop N-25 Snark in 1950, but soon included human tolerance testing under the command of Colonel John P. Stapp. Col. Stapp was the last human test subject to ride the rocket-powered sleds at the HHSTT in December 1954. The track was lengthened to 5,000 ft (1,524m) in 1956, followed by another extension to 35,000 ft (10,668 m) in 1957. The next major track extension occurred in 1974 when the rails from the Edwards Air Force Base test track were shipped to Holloman and added to the existing tracks to give a new total length of 50,771 ft (15,475 m). During this upgrade, a third rail, approximately 15,000 ft (4,572 m), was added for high-speed, narrow-gauge sleds. In 2000, pulldown extensions of 149 ft (46.4 m) were added to the north end of each rail, bringing the two primary rails to 50,917 feet (15,536 m). The last major upgrade to the primary rail system occurred in 2002, when the narrow-gauge track was lengthened to 20,379 ft (6,212 m). The HHSTT currently holds the world land speed record for rocket sleds set in April 2003, at Mach 8.6, or 9,465 feet per second (2,885 meters per second).
