Transcription of Fig. 26
The Long,
Lonely Leap
World’s highest jump tests a new type of parachute for high-altitude flyers and scientists returning from the threshold of space
By CAPT. JOSEPH W. KITTINGER. JR., USAF
Illustrations by National Geographic
photographer VOLKMAR WENTZEL
OVERHEAD my onion-shaped balloon spread its 200-foot diameter against a black daytime sky. More than 18½ miles below lay the cloud-hidden New Mexico desert to which I shortly would parachute.
Sitting in my gondola, which gently twisted with the balloon’s slow turnings, I had begun to sweat lightly, though the temperature read 36° below zero Fahrenheit. Sunlight burned in on me under the edge of an aluminized antiglare curtain and through the gondola’s open door.
In my earphones crackled the voice of Capt. Marvin Feldstein, one of our project’s two doctors, from ground control at Holloman Air Force Base: