I missed the first part of an A&E program, which consequently was the best part; it was about a guy who just broke the atmosphere and somehow made it back to Earth alive. The rest of the program was pretty neat but nothing much. I did a search on A&E and found the video that had this, it’s called “Atmosphere.”
Chances are you haven’t seen it but does anyone have more on this story, preferably the mystery man’s name? Sounds neat, and if it’s on A&E it’s gotta be true.
This popped into my head as I was reading a similar story at www.memepool.com if you’re wondering. (it’s on the front page right now).
The very first link at the meme site is to Snopes, who provides a pretty complete version of the story, including a mini-biography of the guy. (This came up on a thread, here, in the last couple of months, if you want to search for it.)
16,000 feet is not “breaking the atmosphere” by most standards–although it is high enough to cause some oxygen deprivation and risk of hypothermia.
Enough with the nit-picking, maybe it’s a “not so similar story” instead. But thanks, it should be Kittinger a quick search on google says he’s gone the fastest without an engine, and at 100k feet the sky’s basically all black.
The boundary of space is a fuzzy line but FWIW the USAF defines it as 250,000 feet, at least for the purpose of awarding astronaut wings. A few X-15 pilots made that alitude.
Oops my fault if you’re referring to the topic of the post I was talking about the guy on A&E, which said his balloon kept floating and floating or something and then he fell to earth, or something like that. I could have remembered wrong.
IIRC the highest altitude for the X-15 was in the neighborhood of 345,000 feet. If funding for the X-15 and Dyno-soar programs hadn’t been cut we might have started our space program with reusable vehicles instead of disposable ones.
354,000 feet for the X-15, Steve (I know, you did say “in the neighborhood of” ;)), and, interestingly, achieved by legendary test pilot Joe Walker who, three years later, brought down the Valkyrie with his chase plane.