John glenn called it a "dreaded" and "sadistic" part of astronaut training. Apollo 11's Michael Collins called it "diabolical." Time magazine referred to it as "a monstrous apparatus," a "gruesome merry-go-round," and, less originally, a "torture chamber." The Johnsville human centrifuge—the machine everyone loved to hate—was operated by the Navy at its Naval Air Development Center (later the Naval Air Warfare Center) in Warminster, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. For almost 50 years—it ceased government operation in 1996—the centrifuge was the world's most powerful and versatile tool for studying the G forces that are an inescapable part of flight.
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