Word: ballooned
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...heated flying gloves, glass-faced space helmet. At 3:30 a.m. he lay down on a tarpaulin on the desert floor and began breathing pure oxygen. In just five hours, red-haired Jet Pilot Joe Kittinger, father of two children, holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross for his historic balloon ascension to 96,000 ft. 2½ years ago (TIME, June 17, 1957), was to jump toward the earth from the fringes of space in the longest parachute leap in history...
Blips & Survival. At .0615, Kittinger climbed onto a flat-bed truck and squeezed into a small gondola that was strung from a huge plastic balloon. Harnessed on his back was an elaborate instrument kit (14-channel tape recorder for voice, heartbeat and respiration rates, time blips, temperature, etc.). On his left wrist were a rear-view mirror, a small box with built-in altimeter and stopwatch, and a survival knife and scabbard. To one leg was strapped a tiny receiver-transmitter radio, and on his back were two parachutes and an alternate oxygen system...
Minutes later, Kittinger rose slowly in his gondola, "flying" his polyethylene balloon as expanding helium lifted it skyward. At each 5,000-ft. altitude mark, he checked by radio with ground-control technicians, monitored his instruments ("I certainly could not have died of boredom"). Then, at 0831, Kittinger checked his altimeter: 76,400 ft. An officer on the ground radioed the countdown: "Joe, it's X minus two minutes." Then: "X minus one minute...
During his final year here, Hynek will work to assure continuation of the Satellite Tracking Program and try to complete the initial phases of both the "Balloon" and "Cat-Eye" projects for his successor. The Balloon project deals with electro-optical technique for stellar photography, the Cat-Eye with manned and unmanned space flights...
...tones of the rallies. An expectant hush was broken by the Czechoslovakian motorcycle brigade, complete with flags, as it raced about the outer track, followed by briefly clad athletes and the Parade of Nations. The accompaniment was an excited running description from the loudspeakers, the periodic release of colorful balloon clusters, bombs bursting and dropping "peace and friendship" signs in every language, and finally the freeing of thousands of white "peace doves." The Austrians sardonically reported that the Soviet skyrockets finished off the doves...