Born in Tampa, Florida, on 27th July 1928, Joseph Kittinger’s name sprang from newspaper headlines after a huge free fall; a jaw-dropping and successful skydiving endeavour.
On 16th August 1960, Kittinger, who served as an officer in the United States Air Force from 1950-1978, created a world record in skydiving by parachuting from a balloon from 102,800 ft. The skydiving record set by him was unbroken till 2012.
Kittinger participated in high-altitude balloon flight projects from 1956 to 1960, which were named Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior.
He created the world record while on his duty as part of Project Excelsior. That day his mission was to test a new parachute system for jet pilots who were compelled by circumstances to jump from high altitudes.
It is believed that Project Excelsior had a latent objective behind that ambitious exercise. In the subsequent few months, NASA was expecting to launch the first American into space and scientists then had very little idea about how such an extreme environment would influence human physiology. It is believed in some quarters that Project Excelsior helped NASA with the requisite data for ensuring the safety of its astronauts.
It goes without saying that Kittinger’s mission of skydiving from a record high could have made even many a brave soul tremble. To give a perspective, 102,800 ft. above earth was three times the flying altitude of commercial planes.
Kittinger climbed to an altitude of 102,800 feet in a helium balloon and jumped from the gondola. This gondola has nothing to do with a leisurely cruise in Venice. It is similar to a basket and it hangs beneath a hot air balloon where passengers taking a balloon ride board. Several thick ropes keep the gondola attached to the balloon.
The temperature at such height was 35 degrees below zero but Kittinger, clad in a pressure suit, was sweating in the stratosphere while waiting for the go ahead for the parachute jump from the mission control. Before taking the plunge to the earth (southern New Mexico to be exact) he saw up and the sky above him was pitch black with the Sun shining! He recalled the fascinating, almost surreal experience in his 2010 autobiography titled Come Up and Get Me. “It was the blackest black I’d ever seen. Blacker than ink. And it was morning! The sun was shining, but the sky surrounding it was the color of midnight,” he noted. He also saw the bright blue sky of the realm of troposphere beneath him.
Kittinger, whose highly adventurous life also had the experience of being a fighter pilot during USA’s war against Vietnam and of being a prisoner of war in a North Vietnamese prison for 11 months, experienced a complete free fall for four long minutes and 36 long seconds, which was the longest completed parachute free fall at that time. In fact, that free fall by Joseph Kittinger is still the record for the longest duration of free fall. He also attained a breathtaking descending speed of 614 miles per hour during the fall. It was the fastest speed reached by a human under his own power, at that time.
Of course, the fall not only successfully landed Kittinger on the earth but also made him leap into history. He also became the first human being to fully witness the curvature of the Earth, which he did from the stratosphere.
Kittinger’s skydiving record was broken by the Austrian skydiver, Felix Baumgartner on 14th October 2012, when he jumped 128,000 feet (39 km) and landed on the earth from the stratosphere, as part of Red Bull Stratos project.
Presently, the world record for the highest and longest-distance free fall jump is held by the American computer scientist Robert Alan Eustace. On 24th October 2014, he made a free fall jump from the stratosphere, from 135,898 feet or 41.4222 km to reach the earth.The duration of the jump of Alan Eustace was of 15 minutes.
Another of Joseph Kittinger’s landmark achievements was in his later years. In 1984, at the age of 56, he became the first person in the world to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo, in a gas balloon. He died on 9th December 2022, at the age of 94.
