The Long, Lonely Leap

August 16, 2010 will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the most memorable aeronautical moments in history. I remember when I first read about this article way back when I was in highschool. Seeing this picture. In it there was this small figure, clad in a green pressure suit and white helmet, falling toward the sold cloud deck, almost 32 km (20 miles) below. It was one of those images that takes your breath away.

Capt. Joseph W. Kittinger began his “long, lonely leap” by taking a single step out of the open gondola of his Excelsior III balloon drifting 31,333 meters (102, 800 feet) over New Mexico. Trailing a stabilizing drogue chute, he fell from the top of the atmosphere for 4 minutes, 37 seconds, until his main parachute opened at 5,334 meters (17,500 feet). In the thin upper atmosphere near the beginning of his free-fall, he was traveling at over 965 km (600 miles) per hour. As he dropped into the denser atmosphere near 15,240 meters (50,000 feet), his speed slowed to a mere 420 km (250 miles) per hour.

Kittinger stepped from a balloon-supported gondola at the altitude of 31,333 meters

 “There is a hostile sky above me,” he told ground controllers before the jump. “Man will never conquer space. He may live in it, but he will never conquer it. The sky above is void and very black, and very hostile.” If his pressure suit failed at this altitude, he would lose consciousness within 12 seconds and be dead in two minutes. 

As it was, he suffered a painfully swollen hand when one of his gloves failed during the jump. Eight minutes after his main parachute opened, he was back on solid ground in the White Sands Missile Range, having set three world records: the highest ascent in an open gondola, the longest free fall, and the longest parachute descent. 

Kittinger next to the Excelsior gondola

Fifty years later, no one has ever jumped from a higher altitude.....

Source: National Air and Space Museum

chabe