Colonel Joe Kittinger passed away this week at the age of 94. His name may not be as familiar as Neil Armstrong, but his feats - by risking his own safety multiple times - advanced how pilots in high altitude airplanes and astronauts could be safe, survive the harsh conditions, and options to treat them if something went wrong.
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In October 2012, people around the world watched Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jump from high above the Earth in the Red Bull Stratos jump. Reaching a height of nearly 39km in the sky, he fell from a gondola attached to a large helium balloon, in a pressurised suit.
As he fell, he broke the sound barrier, reaching a speed of over 1,350km/hr. At every step. He was mentored and advised by Joe Kittinger - the previous record holder for 52 years.
In 1959 and 1960, then a captain in the US Air Force, Joe Kittinger was part of Project Excelsior, to test parachutes for pilots who'd eventually fly in spy planes such as the U2. As these planes would fly around 20km in the air, much higher than normal planes, a new parachute was made.
At 20km, the air is also much thinner, and the temperature much colder, around -80C.
Kittinger made three jumps in less than a year, and during two of them, problems arose which taught us a lot about what the human body can survive when it comes to space.
During the first test, jumping from a bit over 23km, his parachute deployed too soon, subsequently tangling him, and causing him to spin rapidly. At the speed he fell, and how fast he spun, scientists calculated that at his hands and feet, he was experiencing close to 22 times the force of gravity - 22 Gs. What normally felt like 5kg, felt like 110kg, attached to him.
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On a rocket launch, astronauts usually encounter three to four times the force of gravity. Not 22. This failure taught a lot about what forces, and for how long, the human body can withstand.
Kittinger's second test happened without incident. However, on the third, eventually jumping from a bit over 31km, he encountered another problem. As he was going up, the pressurisation in his right glove failed.
You may remember from high school chemistry that pressure is proportional to volume and temperature. As you change the pressure, you'll change either the volume or temperature.
Picture a half-empty plastic water bottle on an airplane. As you go up, the bottle expands, and as you come back down, it squishes.
As he went up, his hand swelled to twice its size. Once you get below -68 degrees Celsius, at about 19km, your blood will literally boil, so not only was his hand expanding, the blood was boiling.
Despite all of this, he kept going, made the jump, and when he returned to Earth, doctors treated his hand.
Scientists learnt just what the human body could go through, and the treatment if something went wrong.
Col Joe Kittinger made space travel a lot safer by risking his own body in the extremes of Earth.
- Brad Tucker is an Astrophysics and Cosmologist at Mt Stromlo Observatory and the National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the ANU.
