Retired US Air Force colonel Joseph Kittinger, whose 1960 parachute jump from 31.3km above the Earth stood as a world record for more than 50 years, died in Florida on Friday. He was 94.
His death was announced by former US representative John Mica and other friends. The cause was lung cancer.
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. Project Excelsior was aimed at helping design ejection systems for military pilots flying high-altitude missions.
Photo: AP
Wearing a pressure suit and 27kg of equipment, Kittinger almost died during the project’s first jump in November 1959 when his gear malfunctioned after he jumped from 23km. He lost consciousness as he went into a spin that was 22 times the force of gravity. He was saved when his automatic chute opened.
Four weeks later, Kittinger made his second jump from just more than 22km 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 31.3km above the surface.
Free falling in the thin atmosphere, the Tampa native exceeded 965kph before the gradually thickening air slowed his fall to about 241kph when his parachute deployed at 5.5km above the Earth.
“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... You know you are going very fast, but you don’t feel it. You don’t have a 614mph [988kph] wind blowing on you. I could only hear myself breathing in the helmet.”
His record stood until 2012, when Austrian Felix Baumgartner jumped from 38.6km above the New Mexico desert, reaching the supersonic speed of 1,360kph. Kittinger served as an adviser.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS