Stocking Women Wreestling The Excelsior project: parachute jumping 31 kilometers.

name Joseph Kittinger is not widely known in the history of exploration of the atmosphere and space. However, this captain of the U.S. Air Force game was life back in the late fifties to do what nobody had done before: skydive from a balloon more than 30 miles high.

Kittinger with the suit and the parachute jump next to the Excelsior III gondola.
The note under the entry reads "This is the blanching & OverhaulI n the top of the world ":
on today still remains.

The objective of Excelsior project , as it was called the program ran Kittinger jumps, was designed to investigate the posbilidad parachute jump from high altitudes and survive. The planes of the era were reaching record heights and speeds and trying to find out if the pilots could eject in extreme conditions. The first tests carried out on dummies (the operation High Dive ) had shown that bodies tend to rotate about themselves until they reached speeds of 200 revolutions per minute, which could prove fatal.

Thus, we designed a new model incorporating a small parachute parachute extra stabilizer prevents rotation of the pilot. The system included full jump height gauges that allowed deploy parachutes at the right time of descent. In addition, they would reach heights with a very thin atmosphere and low temperatures, and the gondola that would carry Kittinger andra open, so we had to create a pressurized spacesuit insulation itself prevent freezing and Kittinger parachutes. This suit was a crude precursor to what would be the authentic space suits.

Kittinger jumping to 30 km, the cloud layer is about 20 miles below.
The orange box below and
carried on which has been sitting home all the way up from the instrumetación

Kittinger made three jumps. During the first, which took place from about 23 kilometersyou high in November 1959, the stabilizer parachute was deployed and others soon cables Kittinger strangled while spinning him around 120 revolutions per minute. Kittinger lost consciousness, but the main parachute opened automatically saved his life. This near-fatal experience did not prevent another attempt to jump Kittinger dle dicimbre year from the same height, this time with complete success.

The third and last jump was made in August 1960. During ascent, the seal of the right glove of the suit failed, leading to severe pain Kittinger in hand endedand leave it useless. However, Kittinger decided not to report the bug and continue the mission. The rise lasted an hour and broke the altitude record current reaching the 31 kilometers. The Kittinger jumping from that height is the highest ised to date, and during that time the captain experienced by velocidadas of nearly 1,000 km / h and temperatures of 70 degrees below zero, and showed that was possible to survive a jump from that altitude.

The Excelsior III gondola is currently stored at the museum
Force AERES U.S.

Kittinger, a highly decorated officer, was paid for his high oak leaves Flying Cross for Identify and Harmon Trophy from President Eisenhower, and retired , with the rank of colonel in 1978

For dessert, skip the original pictures, which are spectacular. While I have very clear that the music of The Who hit him a lot ... anyway, there are more versions of the video on YouTube. Among them, original music video of "Cowboy Dayvan " of Boards of Canada.