Page 16 - Aerotech News and Review, April 7, 2017

Freefalling from the Edge of Space
by Peter W. Merlin
special to Aerotech News
What is it like to freefall through the airless void more than 100,000 feet above the Earth?
Visitors to the recent Los Ange- les County Air Show at Fox Field in Lancaster had the opportunity to find out from people who have done it. Speakers at one of several history panels included retired Air Force Col. Joseph W. Kittinger II, the first man to parachute from the stratosphere in 1960; Art Thompson, technical proj- ect director for the Red Bull Stratos project, in which Felix Baumgartner broke the speed of sound in freefall after jumping from 128,100 feet in 2012; and former Google senior vice
team of about a dozen Air Force re- searchers and began preparations for stratospheric balloon flights includ- ing high-altitude parachute jumps from above 63,000 feet, the altitude at which fluids in the human body begin to “boil” or vaporize at normal body temperature.
This meant Kittinger would re- quire a pressure suit for protection as he rode in an open basket beneath the helium-filled balloon. But a more pressing problem was the tendency of human bodies falling through ultra- thin air to accelerate into uncontrol- lable flat spins, producing centrifugal forces sufficient to cause cerebral hemorrhage and death. “We dropped dummies from high altitudes and they spun at around 200 rpm,” Kittinger re-
jumped. His initial freefall was near- ly flawless, but Kittinger’s stabilizer drogue deployed early and wrapped around his neck. He began to spin uncontrollably at 120 revolutions per minute and soon lost consciousness. Fortunately, his emergency parachute opened automatically at 10,000 feet, slowing his descent and saving his life. Despite this temporary setback, Kittinger made a second attempt with Excelsior II on Dec. 11. This time, he jumped from an altitude of 74,700 feet and fell approximately 55,000 feet be- fore opening his chute.
On Aug. 16, 1960, Kittinger as- cended to 102,800 feet in Excelsior III, surpassing an altitude record set by Maj. David Simons, who had climbed to 101,516 feet in the Man- high II balloon three years earlier. Floating above 99 percent of Earth’s atmosphere in temperatures as low as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, Kit- tinger was too occupied to savor his achievement. Loaded down with para- chute gear and life-support equipment that nearly doubled his weight during the 90-minute ascent, he also endured severe pain in his right hand due to a leaking glove. This fact he kept to himself for fear the mission would be scrubbed before achieving peak alti- tude.
Some 12 minutes after the balloon leveled off, Kittinger stepped off and began his long freefall. “There was no sense of motion whatsoever,” he recalled, “and it was perfectly silent because there weren’t enough air mol- ecules to transmit sound.”
Plummeting through the strato- sphere for 13 seconds, he reached a
Air Force photograph
Joe Kittinger, seen here posing in his balloon gondola, wore enough survival gear to double his weight.
At 40,000 feet, the 360-foot tall Excelsior III balloon was very slender. It gradually expanded as atmospheric pressure decreased.
president Alan Eustace, who set the record for the highest jump two years later after being carried aloft by a bal- loon to an altitude of 135,890 feet.
Kittinger told the audience how he was only a young captain when was assigned in 1958 to the Escape Sec- tion of the Aeromedical Laboratory at Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, Ohio. There, he became test director for Project Excelsior, an in- vestigation of the use of parachutes for escape from spacecraft or high- altitude aircraft. In November 1959, he traveled to New Mexico with a
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called, “which was enough to kill a person.”
He credited Air Force technician Francis Beaupré with solving the problem through the use of a multi- stage parachute system that featured a stabilizing drogue chute. It was the forerunner of the type of equipment used in emergency ejection systems for high-speed and high-altitude air- craft. “Today, every ejection seat in the world uses a small drogue chute for stabilization,” said Kittinger.
On Nov. 16, 1959, he rode the Ex- celsior I balloon to 76,400 feet and
Air Force photograph
Air Force photograph
Kittinger steps off the gondola at an altitude of 102,800 feet. As would any test pilot, he immediately began transmitting information to his research team on the ground.
maximum speed of around 614 miles per hour, or 0.91 Mach, just below the speed of sound. He slowed as the atmosphere became denser and felt a great sense of relief when his stabilizer chute deployed. Four and a half minutes later, a standard 28-foot parachute opened at about 17,500 feet, allowing him to float to a safe landing at White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, N.M.
Although Kittinger was subsequent- ly credited with three world records; the highest open-gondola balloon as- cent, the longest freefall and the lon- gest parachute descent, he emphasized that these milestones were merely an
incidental byproduct of a military re- search project.
“We weren’t trying to set any re- cords,” he said. “To me, this was just a test flight with only two objectives: to put a man into the space environ- ment, and to design a system to pro- vide a means of escape from very high altitude.”
Kittinger noted that proving a hu- man could function in near-space and that parachuting from the stratosphere was technically feasible required teamwork and operational discipline. “It takes three things to do a program like this,” he said. “You have to have confidence in your equipment, confi- dence in your team, and confidence in yourself, and I had all of those.”
More than half a century later, Kit- tinger assisted the Red Bull Stratos team’s successful bid to make an even higher jump, an effort spearheaded by engineer Art Thompson, who co- founded Sage Cheshire Aerospace, Inc., in Lancaster, Calif. During the recent panel discussion, Thompson described how he conceptualized and drove the design, engineering and fabrication of the flight vehicle, life support systems and flight-testing. He said the project was inspired by a phone call from Austrian skydiver and daredevil Felix Baumgartner in 2010, asking how he might break Kit- tinger’s records. The ensuing effort eventually received sponsorship from the Austrian company that makes Red Bull Energy Drink.
“I pitched it to Red Bull as a full scientific program,” said Thompson, “not merely a stunt.” The Stratos proj- ect included manned and unmanned balloon flights, evaluation of different kinds of pressure suits, and design of a pressurized crew capsule. “We wanted that secondary safety [envelope] of a capsule,” he said, adding that, oth- erwise, “if the suit failed at altitude, Felix would be dead in 14 seconds.”
The suit ultimately selected was essentially the same as that used by pilots flying the U-2 and SR-71 at alti- tudes above 70,000 feet. It was modi- fied for greater mobility, which pro-
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