The U.S. Air Force pilot who held the record for the highest parachute jump for more than 50 years has died.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Retired Air Force Col. Joseph Kittinger, whose 1960 parachute jump from almost 20 miles above the Earth stood as a world record for more than 50 years, died Friday in Florida. He was 94.Kittinger, then an Air Force captain and pilot, gained worldwide fame when he completed three jumps over 10 months from a gondola that was hoisted into the stratosphere by large helium balloons.
Four weeks later, Kittinger made his second jump from just over 14 miles above the surface. This time, there were no problems. Kittinger’s record jump came on Aug. 16, 1960, in the New Mexico desert. His pressure suit malfunctioned as he rose, failing to seal off his right hand, which swelled to twice normal size before he jumped from 102,800 feet — more than 19 miles above the surface.Free falling in the thin atmosphere, the Tampa native exceeded 600 mph before the gradually thickening air slowed his fall to about 150 mph when his parachute deployed at 18,000 feet .
“There’s no way you can visualize the speed,” Kittinger told Florida Trend magazine in 2011. “There’s nothing you can see to see how fast you’re going. You have no depth perception. If you’re in a car driving down the road and you close your eyes, you have no idea what your speed is. It’s the same thing if you’re free falling from space. There are no signposts. You know you are going very fast, but you don’t feel it. You don’t have a 614-mph wind blowing on you.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, Capt. Joseph Kittinger Jr., aerospace laboratory test director, sits in the open balloon gondola after his first parachute test jump for Project Excelsior at the Air Force Missile Development Center, N.M., Nov. 16, 1959.
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