From the field: The Highest Step in the World
On August 16, 1960 Captain Joe Kittinger of the United States Air Force ascended into the sky in an open gondola. Towed by a helium balloon, he ascended to an altitude of 102,800 ft. It was the highest altitude a human had ever achieved at that time. As the sign on his gondola proudly proclaimed, “This is the highest step in the world.” At the edge of space, nearly 20 miles up, Joe Kittinger jumped, beginning an epic fall back to Earth. He compared this amazing fall with the feeling of being suspended silently in space. What felt motionless was really a 614 mph fall through the stratosphere. It wasn’t until he reached the lower, denser portion of the atmosphere that he was met with the deafening sound of his descent and the familiar push of the wind on his body. In the span of just a few minutes he had plummeted almost 85,000 ft with only his drogue chute to slow and stabilize his fall. At a height of 18,000 ft he deployed his main chute and slowly returned to the safety of the earth.
Kittinger’s amazing journey was part of Project Excelsior, a project of the United States Air Force studying the effects of high altitude bail-out on pilots. At the time, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were running high, and for the past 10 years the United States Air Force had been developing high-altitude aircraft for the surveillance and reconnaissance of it’s cold war counterpart.
At any given height above the surface of the Earth, the boundaries that separate nations are invisible, non-existent. There is no United States, there is no Soviet Union, only an expanse of sea and land gently curving to the horizon. And while it may be difficult for those on the ground to cross these invisible, cultural boundaries, we should in turn focus on the journey of crossing our own expansive void back to the comfort of solid ground. And let us enjoy the ride, if just for a few minutes.
