Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1960 Dec
Contents
From speedboats to jets to balloons T HE AUTHOR raced speedboats as a teen ager in his native Florida, became an Air Force jet pilot in his 20's, and turned space prober in his 30's. Captain Kittinger, now 32, learned the fasci nation of research in Project Manhigh, riding a balloon's pressurized gondola to 96,200 feet in 1957. The flight tested equipment for Lt. Col. David G. Simons's ascent to 101,516 feet. Two years earlier Kittinger flew the obser vation plane that monitored Col. John Paul Stapp's rocket-sled run of 632 miles an hour. Kittinger was impressed by the dedication of Colonel Stapp, a pioneer in space medicine. knew that if something went wrong, the chamber pressure could be increased imme diately, returning me to safety. Doctors stood just a few feet away, watching through a port hole for any sign of malfunction. But here in the eerie silence of space, I knew that my life depended entirely upon my equipment, my own actions, and the presence of God. Aerodynamically, space begins about 120 miles from earth. Physiologically and psy chologically, however, it starts only 12 miles up, where survival requires elaborate pro tection against an actual space environment. Thanks to my dedicated Project Excelsior team, I had twice before penetrated this realm in an open gondola to make test jumps from 14-mile heights. Now I had climbed to 191/2 miles above sea level, where the physical and mental hazards were much greater, for a more conclusive test of our space-survival and parachute escape systems. The idea of men reaching toward space with balloons and parachutes in the age of jet planes and rockets may seem strange. Actually, it makes the best kind of sense. No powered aircraft can put man into a space environment and keep him there for a sus tained period of time. But the lighter-than- Stapp, in turn, noted the flyer's zeal and skill ful jet piloting, recommended him for space aviation work, and fostered the high-altitude tests that led to Kittinger's record leap last Au gust 16. The colonel provided the project's Latin name, Excelsior, meaning "ever upward." For an open-gondola jump from 14 miles in 1959, Kittinger received this year's Harmon Trophy for aeronauts and the Leo Stevens par achute medal. He also added an Oak Leaf Cluster to his Distinguished Flying Cross. Mrs. Kittinger is the former Pauline Bauer, whom the author met while serving in Germany. They have two sons,Joseph III, 8, and Mark, 5. air balloon, man's oldest flight vehicle, can. Twenty-five years ago last month, two Army Air Corps captains, Albert W. Stevens and Orvil A. Anderson, took the balloon Explorer II to the then unprecedented height of 72,395 feet- 13.71 miles. Their pressurized gondola and its instruments constituted a two-and-a-quarter-ton payload. Results of this famous National Geographic Society U. S. Army Air Corps stratosphere flight are studied by airmen to this day.* To understand the need for a high-altitude escape system, consider the plight of an air man who has to bail out above 20,000 feet. He faces two choices, either of which could be fatal. Should he open his chute immediately after bail-out from a speeding craft, he risks death from his canopy's opening shock, from lack of oxygen, or from severe cold. Flat spin imperils him if he tries to fall free to lower, livable altitudes before opening his chute. His body may whirl like a runaway *See "Man's Farthest Aloft," by Capt. Albert W. Stevens, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, January, 1936; also "The National Geographic Society-U . S. Army Air Corps Stratosphere Flight of 1935 in the Balloon 'Explorer II,'" a volume of technical papers published by The Society (out of print but available in many libraries). No wind whistles or tugs at me in the initial drop. I accelerate with the speed of an object falling in a vacuum. Every second I drop 22 miles an hour faster but have no sensation of velocity. In eerie silence, earth, sky, and departing balloon revolve around me as if I were the center of the universe. I feel like a man in suspended animation. Though my stabilization chute opens at 96,000 feet, I accelerate for 6,000 feet more before hitting a peak of 614 miles an hour, nine-tenths the speed of sound at my altitude. An Air Force camera on the gondola took this photograph when the cotton clouds still lay 80,000 feet below. At 21,000 feet they rushed up so chillingly that I had to remind myself they were vapor and not solid. HIGH SPEED EKTACHROMEBY UNITED STATES AIR FORCE© NG.S . 856
Links
Archive
1961 Jan
1960 Nov
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page