Word: ballooned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first vehicle to make a really big stride into space will probably be a cheap, unstreamlined, unglamorous, four-stage job assembled out of familiar rocket hardware by Aeronutronic Systems, Inc., a Ford Motor Co. subsidiary at Glendale, Calif. Its gimmick: it will start at 100,000 ft. from a balloon...
Standing toe to toe against the looming Soviet-satellite army of 175 divisions keeps the five-division U.S. Seventh Army in Germany on constant alert against the day the "balloon goes up" in Western Europe. Merely staying combat-ready in peacetime is tough enough, but the hard-training Seventh is plagued by an even tougher problem: one in three of its 165,000 tankers, atomic cannoneers and plain gravel crunchers should never have been sent overseas in the first place. Reason: they are "eight balls," mentally equivalent to sixth-grade schoolboys, a disciplinary headache to their commanders and a serious...
...learned to fly in three weeks, triumphantly tested his theory in person. Summoned by Churchill early in World War II ("He could decipher signals from the experts on the far horizon, and explain to me in lucid, homely terms what the issues were"), he had a hand in the balloon barrage, setting up the radar screen, and counter-measures for magnetic mines. In Churchill's second premiership he served (1951-53) as adviser on all atomic programs...
...balloon reached 96,000 ft. in 78 minutes. "There I was," cracks Pilot Kittinger, "at 96,000, stalled out but not dropping." The original plan had been for him to make a twelve-hour flight, but an oxygen leak developed, and Colonel Stapp, who was following by helicopter, decided that Kittinger should start down after 2½ hours. Otto Winzen, maker of the balloon, relayed the decision. Kittinger replied in code that he would not come down. Winzen pleaded. Back from 18 miles overhead came the coded answer: "Come and get me." Stapp and Winzen were afraid that hypoxia (lack...
...start down, Kittinger released a calculated quantity of helium. Slowly the great balloon sank toward the earth. Kittinger could not see the surface that he might hit, so airplane pilots circling below him talked him down, telling him when to drop a little ballast to keep in the air until he had cleared all dangerous obstacles. At last the gondola settled into the shallow water of Indian Creek 80 miles from its take-off place. Colonel Stapp jumped out of his helicopter and unlatched the gondola's cover. Kittinger stepped out grinning. "Not a red hair of his head...