One Giant Leap--102,800 Feet To Be Exact
Before Gagarin and before Shepard, one man soared to the edge of the sky. He did so not by way of a space capsule perched on top of an unruly rocket or a stripped down test plane, he did so by way of a balloon.
During the 1950’s the best way to test a pressure suit was by way of a specially sealed room that created a vacuum. This was, however, a tidy room where help was a moment away. These kinds of suits needed to be tested in an environment that mimicked the conditions of weightless and airless space as closely as possible.
While the space race has already begun with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik and its American counterparts by 1960, man has not yet entered it. While both countries are racing to launch a man, many mysteries still confound NASA. For instance, are the space suits in development really reliable? Will a man be able to maneuver while wearing a sixty-pound pressure suit high above the Earth? Are the parachutes that will be needed at high altitudes capable of deploying? NASA and the United States Air Force were rapidly conducting research in these areas(and many others) to help astronauts survive a trip into space. This research also aided high altitude test plane research.
In 1960 one man would begin the process of physically answering these questions by rising to an altitude of 102,800ft. and then jumping. Today, almost 41 years later, his adventure remains the highest parachute jump in history, and the highest a lone man has ever risen by way of powerless flight. The man who literally took the biggest leap in the world was Joseph Kittinger. Today he is regarded as the stuff of legend.
His jump was, in a way, a prelude to the amazing experiences that future astronauts would soon be enduring in just a few months ahead in 1961. At the time, no man had gone any higher off of the Earth than Kittinger had.
This task was incredibly dangerous. Besides the life support system and pressure suit that he was testing, this flight would also test a new type of parachute for super high altitude aircraft. His suit was also an experiment in shielding solar radiation. As the world would learn decades later, this parachute jump also had another motive: to test methods of surviving high altitude bailouts by U-2 spy plane pilots. In every sense of the word, Kittinger was a human guinea pig. However, if he were successful he would lead the way to improvements in spacesuit and spacecraft technology.
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