Word: balloonful
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...that lay on the floor of the open-pit Minnesota iron mine. With swift precision, the coveralled men of the launching crew lowered an eight-foot metal capsule-an elongated vacuum bottle-to the crater floor and attached to it a gigantic (280 ft. high), pear-shaped polyethylene balloon. Within the capsule, a balding Air Force space surgeon named Dave Simons stirred impatiently in his tight little world...
...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...
...helium nucleus, most powerful particle ever trapped, crashed into a 200-lb. stack of 300 silver bromide photographic plates suspended beneath a balloon that drifted last fall for eight hours at 116,000 ft. over Minnesota. The particle touched off a shower of electrons that streaked the plates with an expanding forest of lines. One puzzling fact: the intruder bumped into two silver or bromine nuclei, creating six mesons in the first collision and 64 in the second. Theoretically, the first collision should have produced more-not fewer-mesons than the second. Hunting for an explanation, Minnesota scientists are still...