.jpg)
Before arriving to Òdena, they have talked about Joseph Kittinger, the American pilot who became the first person to fly a gas balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean, on a day like today in 1984.
Joseph William Kittinger II (July 27, 1928-December 9, 2022) was an American military pilot who was an officer in the United States Air Force. He served from 1950 to 1978 and earned Command Pilot status before retiring with the rank of colonel. He held the world record for the highest skydive -31.3 km- from 1960 until 2012.
Kittinger participated in the Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior high-altitude balloon flight projects from 1956 to 1960 and was the first man to fully witness the curvature of the Earth.
A fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, Kittinger shot down a North Vietnamese MiG-21 jet fighter. He was later shot down as well, subsequently spending 11 months as a prisoner of war in a North Vietnamese prison before he was repatriated in 1973.
In 1984, Kittinger became the first person to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon.
In 2012, Kittinger participated in the Red Bull Stratos project as capsule communicator at age 84, directing Felix Baumgartner on his 39 km freefall from Earth's stratosphere, which broke Kittinger's own 53-year-old record. Felix Baumgartner's record would be broken two years later by Alan Eustace.
Born in Tampa, Florida, and raised in Orlando, Florida, Kittinger was educated at The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida, and the University of Florida. He became fascinated with planes at a young age and soloed in a Piper Cub by the time he was 17.
After racing speedboats as a teenager, he entered the U.S. Air Force as an aviation cadet in March 1949. On completion of aviation cadet training in March 1950, he received his pilot wings and a commission as a second lieutenant. He was subsequently assigned to the 86th Fighter-Bomber Wing based at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany, flying the F-84 Thunderjet and F-86 Sabre.
In 1954, Kittinger was transferred to the Air Force Missile Development Center (AFMDC) at Holloman AFB, New Mexico.
Captain Kittinger was next assigned to the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. For Project Excelsior, meaning ever upward, a name given to the project by Colonel Stapp as part of research into high-altitude bailouts, he made a series of three extreme altitude parachute jumps from an open gondola carried aloft by large helium balloons.
Kittinger retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1978 and initially went to work for Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) Corporation in Orlando, Florida. He later became vice president of flight operations for Rosie O'Grady's Flying Circus, part of the Rosie O'Grady's/Church Street Station entertainment complex in Orlando, prior to the parent company's dissolution.
Still interested in ballooning, Kittinger set a world distance record for the AA-06 size class of gas balloons of 3,221.23 kilometers in 1983. The record has since been broken.
In 1984, he completed the first solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic in the 3,000 m3 Balloon of Peace, launched from Caribou, Maine, on September 14 and landing on September 18.
The flight was organized by the Canadian promoter Gaetan Croteau. An official FAI world aerospace record, the 5,703.03-kilometer flight is the longest gas balloon flight in the AA-10 size category.
Kittinger died at the age of 94 on December 9, 2022. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
More information: The New York Times
I was struck with the beauty of it.
But I was also struck by how hostile it is:
more than 100 degrees below zero, no air.
No comments:
Post a Comment