Skydiving, Part II: Joe Kittinger Setting the Altitude Record

This Skydiving series was brought about from a Michel Fournier profile in the The New Yorker.  Burkhard Bilger's work, in covering Fournier's jump attempts, records some quality time with the highest-jump record holder, Joe Kittinger.

Before Project Excelsior, Kittinger helped the Air Force understand the effects of zero gravity.  There were all kinds of crazy theories about what zero gravity would do to an animal.  Oh, and those cosmic rays!  They would penetrate the body like needles!  To first test that, of course, they sent up animals into the stratosphere, then check out what returned.  Apparently, the monkeys wouldn't come down intact.  So, they got a guy like Kittinger to do fly something called Keplerian trajectories to test zero gravity, which are flights where (as Bilger explains):

"[Kittinger] would dive down from fifteen thousand feet, then pull up into a hard, arcing climb. As the plane crested, at about twenty thousand feet, Kittinger and his test subjects--humans, cats, or monkeys--would be weightless for thirty to forty seconds. 'They were trying to see if cats would lose their ability to right themselves,' he told me recently. 'But, as I remember it, they would just start floating around the plane. We'd hit zero gravity, and there would be this cat going by.'"

That sounds insane.  They didn't have many instruments in the 1950's.  He'd fly these planes with a radio communicator, altimeter, odometer, gas gauge and a deal that tells them if they are flying level.  That's it... Project Excelsior used that as a springboard.  Once they realized cosmic rays won't rip holes in you and that zero g didn't tear you apart, all they had to worry about was the lack of atmosphere and the insane cold.  Easy as pie.

The project was run on a shoe-string budget, so the equipment was, literally, an open-door capsule that was hooked up to a helium balloon.  (That's the actual equipment above.)  Like a hot air balloon, it had no rudder or engine and was at the mercy of the winds as it climbed.  Because of that, they launched Kittinger from the middle of New Mexico.  There was no way to know where that Kittinger or the capsule would come down.  Unlike Fournier's sassy capsule, Kittinger's wasn't pressurized, so his suit and helmet were pressurized to protect from the elements as he climbed.  (This sounds like madness to me... it just gets colder and colder with less and less atmosphere.  I'd be obsessed with a tear happening on the suit that would result in me exploding.  I'm no bad ass.)

The first jump was on November 16, 1959.  He climbed to 76,000 feet (23,165 meters), almost twice as high as anyone had ever jumped before.  Kittinger went to stand up in the gondola and realized that he was stuck to the seat.  The equipment kit that was attached to the suit had become wedged into the seat as the pressure dropped.  Bilger explains it from there:

"By the time Kittinger wrenched himself free, he was drastically delayed. His first parachute, timed to open automatically, was released almost fourteen seconds early, when he was falling too slowly for it to fill with air. Rather than stabilize his fall, it wrapped around his neck. The second chute opened at eighteen thousand feet and coiled around his body--he was unconscious by then, and spinning up to eighty revolutions per minute. The third, reserve chute saved his life. When he came to, he was drifting down to the desert sand, shrouded in cloth."

Holy.  Moly.  The pre-programmed parachutes almost killed him by releasing early, then saved his ass by opening after he lost consciousness from spinning so quickly.  What did Kittinger do after he almost died?  Quit?  Take time off?  No.... he jumped again three weeks later.  December 11, 1959, Kittinger was back up in the gondola, successfully leaping from 55,000 feet (16,800 meters) 75,000 feet (22,860 meters) - please see comment below from Kittinger, himself, correcting the post.  Yes, Kittinger, himself.  I could smell the manliness through the comment.

Almost a year later, Kittinger tried again, in his third and final jump that would set the world record for the highest parachute jump, the longest parachute freefall and the fastest freefall, all of which Fournier's aiming to break.  During the ascent, the pressure seal on his right glove failed.  He was such a badass, though, he didn't radio that problem to the ground crew (despite the great pain), because he didn't want to call off the jump.

The gondola climbed, and the pain increased.  Kittinger scoffed at his record of 76,000 feet, this time leaping from 103,000 feet (31,300 meters).  19 miles up.  (The photo above is actually from this successful attempt.)  When he jumped, he thought he wasn't falling because there was no atmosphere, so there was no sound of wind passing his helmet.  It took him looking back up at the gondola, his only reference point, to realize that they being separated at high speeds.  Within thirty seconds of free fall, he was traveling 600 miles per hour (966 km/hr) and had traveled 13,000 feet (~4,000 meters).  Wowzers.

The parachutes worked perfectly.  The fall took thirteen minutes and forty-five seconds.  His right hand was twice its normal size when he landed.  The whole experience shook Kittinger up.  He never jumped again.  Correction from comments below, Kittinger jumped 67 more times.

He went on to serve in the Vietnam War, racking up those 37 medals (also including two Silver Stars and five Distinguished Crosses).  He was shot down in 1972 and spent eleven months as a prisoner of war in Hanoi Hilton.  That wasn't enough for him, because twelve years later, he completed a solo balloon flight across the Atlantic.  This is a serious bad ass.

Kittinger is still alive and living in Florida with his wife, entertained by people trying to break his record.  In 1965 and 1966 New Jersian Nicholas Piantanida tried three record-breaking jumps.  All were failures, and, on the third jump, his visor opened on the way down (no on knows why) and he slipped into a coma and died four months later.  Kittinger says he gets a call a week claiming someone is about to break the record, but he brushes them off.  He says they have no idea what it entails, just that they want their name in the record books.  (It takes giant balls, apparently.)

And now Fournier's trying.  Again, it's been 7 years and $20,000,000 to not break a record set by a guy set almost 50 years ago. 

I find this all fascinating. 

Joe Kittinger?  HAWT action [hot ak-shuhn].