Original spaceman?

Aggieboy

Anyone else see Joe Kittinger's pioneering 1960, 990 kph, 31 km jump from space on 'The Earth', last night? I'd never heard of him tbh. This, my friend's, takes balls...........................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ7N6V-YKJ8&feature=related

deptfordmarmoset

Yes, I saw it. Almost 1000kph and no wind to tell you you're falling. I've no idea how he managed to jump out of his balloon.

(The sky surfing looked fun, though...)

Frank the tank

Not just balls but a balloon and a parachute.

A very brave man indeed.

takethehighroad

Yeah I saw that on bestofyoutube.com

It's an incredible story, proper boys and their toys stuff

Flasheart

I read about it when I was a kid. Not seen the footage before though.
I like the bit where the commentator said "then Joe Kittenger did something amazing" ...more like "then Joe Kittenger did something TRUELY stupid" :shock:
...that guy had guts!!

finchy

He'd have to go a bit further to get into space I suspect a bit of biased narrating in the part of Discovery Channel here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line

http://www.fai.org/astronautics/100km.asp

It's still very impressive though.

EDIT: the wikipedia link isn't working properly. Just go on to wikipedia and search for "Karman line"