Joseph Kittinger
Dec. 11th, 2022 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauldryeSo Joseph Kittinger died on Friday. If you're not sure who he is, he was a precursor to the American space program via Project Manhigh, He got as high as 30.9 kilometers above the Earth from 1957-58, using stratospheric balloons, and is most famous for holding the record for highest parachute jump which he did in1959 during the follow-up Project Excelsior. He was "champion" at that until 2012.
The Project Manhigh capsule was proposed as part of Wernher von Braun's "Man Very High", later known as Project Adam. With an added nosecone, it would have been launched on top of a Redstone to 150 miles up and beat the Russkies to the punch at putting a man in space. It was deemed a stunt -- and it was -- so unworthy of the effort, though it bears some resemblance to the Mercury program. The main difference being that, as it used the pre-existing Manhigh capsule, the hope was that it could be put together quickly rather than launching for the first time several weeks after Gagarin's historic flight (as ended up happening).
The Project Manhigh capsule was proposed as part of Wernher von Braun's "Man Very High", later known as Project Adam. With an added nosecone, it would have been launched on top of a Redstone to 150 miles up and beat the Russkies to the punch at putting a man in space. It was deemed a stunt -- and it was -- so unworthy of the effort, though it bears some resemblance to the Mercury program. The main difference being that, as it used the pre-existing Manhigh capsule, the hope was that it could be put together quickly rather than launching for the first time several weeks after Gagarin's historic flight (as ended up happening).
