Word: ballooned
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...quiet morning soon after sunup, a big polyethylene balloon took off from near Minneapolis with a weird apparatus dangling far below it. Suspended in a frame was a reflecting telescope of 12-in. aperture built by Perkin-Elmer Corp. of Norwalk, Conn. Its mirrors were made of quartz so that they would not be distorted by solar radiation, and it had an ingenious device to change the focus slightly during each sequence of 20 pictures. This would ensure that one of these pictures would be in good focus. Another device, assembled at the University of Colorado, had the duty...
...Once." The Air Force had a robust guinea pig to send higher for longer than man had ever gone before.* Both physician and physicist, Major Simons, 35, is one of the nation's top space medicinemen. Training for his mission, he had logged 63 hours of manned balloon flight, sealed himself in a capsule up to 26 hours, and made a parachute jump. Last June he supervised the trial ascent to 96,000 ft. by Captain Joe W. Kittinger, fighter pilot (TIME, June 17). On the ground, Space Surgeon Colonel John Stapp had drilled Simons for hours on simulated...
...Continue." That night, after the earth was dark, Simons' balloon still shone with reflected sunlight. Through his porthole windows, he stared at the most impressive sight of his life: a stratosphere sunset. Checking the changing shades against a spectrum chart, he radioed a fervid description back to earth, once excitedly described a shade as "purplish blue blue." Said he: "There's no color on. this chart to match it. No sunset on earth was ever so beautiful...
...night also brought danger. Far below, thunderstorms were moving in from the west. The tracking C-47 could not climb through the weather to follow the balloon, and radar was useless. The radio that reported Simons' heartbeat and respiration rate had died, and the main radio seemed to be weakening. Calmly, Dr. Stapp told Dr. Simons the news: if he stayed up he would have to monitor his own pulse and breathing, take his own position checks and thus could not risk more than a short nap. Answered Simons: "Let's continue the flight...
...Nothing but Quiet." As the night wore on, the helium in his balloon cooled and contracted, and Simons began to drop at 500 ft. a minute toward the storms that looked as harmless as tiny powder-puffs. Soon the balloon was down to 68,400 ft., and the temperature inside the gondola dropped to 34° F. Simons pulled on a warming suit over his figure-hugging space suit, dumped some ballast (including two spent batteries), and climbed back to safety. An hour before sunrise, he radioed a plea to the ground: "I've got to get some sleep...