Word: balloons
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When the sun set, the balloon cooled and dropped to 68,000 ft. Commander Ross dumped 300 lbs. of "sunset ballast" (mostly steel shot) to boost it up again. Though the gondola was insulated, it soon grew deathly cold. Both men shivered so hard that they literally shook the whole gondola. When Venus finally rose at 3:30 a.m., Moore started to turn the telescope toward it. But whenever the men moved, the gondola corkscrewed and rotated, vibrating all the time from their shivering. "It was very hard to point in a given direction," says Moore. "It showed that Newton...
...morning last week, the long, lanky balloon rose slowly from a sheltered valley in the wooded hills outside Rapid City, S. Dak. Climbing slowly into the far blue sky, it gradually expanded to its full 172-ft. diameter. Huddled in the trim, 7-ft. pressurized spherical gondola that dangled beneath it like an afterthought were two scientists-Commander Malcolm Ross, 40, a balloonist from the Office of Naval Research, and Physicist-Engineer Charles B. Moore Jr., 39, a balloon expert who works for Arthur D. Little Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. Their object: to get mankind's first good look...
...flight. Chief instrument was a 16-in. telescope mounted on top of the gondola and manipulated by remote control by the scientists inside. But they ran into immediate trouble. Take-off had been delayed for three hours by a minor fire in the gondola, and by the time the balloon reached 80,000 ft., Venus was too low to catch in the telescope. They were forced to wait all through the long...
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...