Word: gondolas
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...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 emergencies. Says Stapp: "After several weeks Dave could sit in a gondola, handle 20 emergencies and not die once...
...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!" Permission...
High-Voiced Helium. At 11 p.m., seven hours before the scheduled start of the flight, Kittinger got into his pressure suit ("feels like being loved by an octopus") and climbed into the gondola, a closed cylinder 3 ft. in diameter and 7 ft. tall. The lid was clamped shut, and the air inside was replaced by a helium-oxygen mixture. This was to denitrogenize Kittinger so that a sudden drop in pressure would not give him the bends by releasing bubbles of nitrogen in his blood. From this point on, his voice sounded somewhat squeaky; helium raises the pitch...
Everything about the gondola had been carefully designed to cushion the harsh conditions on the edge of space. The upper atmosphere is bitter cold, but the air is so thin that it has little chilling effect. The controlling influence is sunlight, much stronger than on the surface. To ward it away, the gondola was insulated with four layers of honeycomb paper and plastic, and an air-conditioning system was capable of keeping the inside temperature down to a comfortable...
...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," said Stapp, "had turned grey...