A giant of American aerospace history, Air Force Col. Joseph Kittinger Jr., who for more than half a century held a world record for a parachute jump from the edge of space, died in Florida on Friday at age 94.
he took off from the New Mexico desert wearing a cumbersome pressure suit — that would briefly malfunction — and rigged with gear that almost doubled his weight, then fell at record speeds.
It took him 1 hour 31 minutes to climb to his maximum altitude, even as he began experiencing severe pain in his right hand because of a failure in his pressure glove. He remained at peak altitude for around 12 minutes before stepping out of his gondola to free fall, then parachute down to a landing.. “There’s nothing you can see to see how fast you’re going. You have no depth perception. … There are no signposts. I could only hear myself breathing in the helmet,” he said.
In 1960, he was awarded the Harmon Trophy by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for outstanding accomplishments in aeronautics. His record for the highest balloon ascent and the longest parachute free fall would stand for 52 years. It was broken in 2012, when Col. Kittinger worked as a consultant to the Austrian
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