Supercharged

Tim Top

So my son John and I are out walking around downtown San Francisco late Friday night and we encounter a couple of hills (who'd a thunk it?). He bolts up the hill and I charge after him. I'm not going to let this little whipper snapper show me up. Of course he does. He pauses half way up the block and waits for me to catch up, which I do, eventually, huffing and puffing. He tells me he's tired and then turns around and bolts up the rest of the block. I follow at a more sedate pace.

This gets me thinking about people using oxygen when they climb Mt. Everest. Most of them carry bottles of compressed oxygen, and then they leave them there. I understand the path to the top is literally littered with them.

I read a science fiction story some time ago, I can't remember the author or title, but it involved winged creatures approximately the size of a human, living on a world with an atmosphere and gravity similar to Earth's. The author argued that this should not be possible, but someone noticed that these creatures were supercharged. They had something like bellows between their main wing bones and their torso, so every time they flapped their wings, they forced more air into their lungs.

Bellows

So now I'm thinking, why can't we do that for mountain climbers? Strap a couple of bellows onto your chest, connect the nozzles to an oxygen mask, and hook a strap between your upper arm and the handle on the bellows. You swing your arms while you climb, your arms compress the bellows and blow compressed air into your lungs, you get more oxygen and you can keep climbing.

It might not be workable, forcing more air into your lungs might cause more problems than it solves. Working the bellows with your arms may take more energy than the extra oxygen would create. But maybe this will give someone with more knowledge of these topics an idea.

Update July 2017 replaced missing pictures.