 We've all heard the saying fly by the seat of your pants, but what if you're flying and you can't feel the seat of your pants? I'm Amy Shere title and this week on vintage space, we're talking about Hubertus Strughold and his Novacain flying experiments. In common parlance to fly by the seat of one's pants means to go with the flow. It means you're gonna do what feels right on instinct as you do it. For a pilot, flying by the seat of one's pants means something a lot more literal. We actually get a lot of information from the seat of our pants. In the case of pilots flying, they rely on the pressure of their bums against a seat to understand and interpret things like acceleration and whether or not they are climbing or diving. Without any instruments, the sensation of being pushed into the seat or being lifted out of it can actually tell pilots a lot about where they are in the air. But what if a pilot couldn't feel the seat of his pants? It's a question Hubertus Strughold had when he thought about men going into space. In a microgravity environment, pilots wouldn't be pushed into a seat and they wouldn't have that sensory information. They could become disoriented or nauseous. To test his theory about the importance of the sensation in the seat of one's pants, Strughold sought to take away that sensation and he used himself as a guinea pig. He shot his buttocks full of novocaine enough to completely deaden the sensation in his rear end. Then he got into a plane as a passenger and had the pilot perform a series of acrobatic maneuvers. Climbs, dives, loops and rolls. And found that he quickly became slightly disoriented and overall nauseous. It was not at all a pleasant experience. But, he said, the experiment proved his theory that the seat of one's pants is a very valuable flight instrument. One that men in space might miss in a microgravity environment. So what do you guys think of Strughold's methods? Would you shoot your posterior full of novocaine in the name of science? Leave your questions, comments and any thoughts below. And for more on the life of Hubertus Strughold, check out the latest article over at Vintage Space on Popular Science. You can find me on Twitter as AST Vintage Space and as always don't forget to subscribe for weekly Vintage Space video updates.