American Experience (1988–…): Season 28, Episode 9 - Space Men - full transcript

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.

(crowd chattering)

NARRATOR:
In the spring of 1959,

the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, NASA,

introduced Americans
to a new kind of hero:

the astronaut.

Known as the Mercury Seven,

their mission was to rocket
beyond the earth's atmosphere,

and they quickly became
a national sensation.

In the months that followed,
their faces blanketed the news

as the country waited to see



who would become the first man
in space.

But far from the Project Mercury
spotlight,

deep in the New Mexico desert,

the Air Force was also preparing

to launch a man
towards the heavens.

With a fraction of NASA's budget
and none of its renown,

Project Excelsior was about
to send Captain Joseph Kittinger

100,000 feet above the earth,

and he would get there
not by rocket, but by balloon.

It was the culmination
of over a decade

of little-known
aerospace experiments,

and this would be
the most dangerous of them all.

CRAIG RYAN:
There were a myriad of problems

with sending a person up
to that altitude.



Could you keep them warm?

Would they be exposed
to dangerous radiation?

How do you give them a safe,
breathable atmosphere?

BURKHARD BILGER:
Above 60,000 feet,

you've got so little pressure
that your blood can boil.

Organs can rupture,
blood vessels can rupture.

The temperature is 100 degrees
below zero.

There are just so many things
that can go wrong.

GREGORY KENNEDY:
At 100,000 feet,

you're above 99%
of the earth's atmosphere,

so you might as well be
in space.

NARRATOR:
Though largely forgotten,

balloonists
were the first to venture

into the frozen vacuum
on the edge of our world,

exploring the very limits
of human physiology

and human ingenuity
in this deadly realm.

KEN HOLLINGS:
Flying in a balloon

to the upper reaches
of the atmosphere

perhaps seems odd, eccentric,

even self-inflicted madness.

But there's no question
that these experiments

fed into what NASA was about
to undertake with Mercury.

They answered
a lot of questions.

They answered
a lot of big questions.

RYAN:
At 102,800 feet,
higher than any human being

has ever been in a balloon
at this point,

Joe Kittinger gets a signal
from his ground crew.

He stands up in the gondola,

disconnects his onboard
oxygen supply,

says a little prayer,
and steps off.

NARRATOR:
In April 1947,

a young Army doctor
was transferred

to a remote airfield
100 miles north of Los Angeles,

soon to be named
Edwards Air Force Base.

John Paul Stapp was a maverick

in the bourgeoning field
of aviation medicine,

and Edwards
was just the place to be.

Only months
after Stapp's arrival,

test pilot Chuck Yeager

broke the sound barrier
in the rocket-powered X-1.

His accomplishment marked
the beginning of a new era

that would push the limits
of man and machine.

HOLLINGS:
Aerospace as a concept,

the idea of getting a man

high up into the atmosphere
and beyond,

was still relatively new.

And doctors were aware
that the human body,

although robust
and neatly packaged,

does have its limits.

FRANCIS FRENCH:
John Stapp was watching jets

go higher and faster
and realized

that scientists and doctors
had no idea really

what would happen
to the human body

as it was subjected
to faster forces

and higher altitudes
than ever before.

BILGER:
And so Stapp
decides to investigate

what the human body can handle...

How much speed we can handle,

how much falling we can handle,
how much altitude we can handle.

And he starts to unpack this
little by little.

NARRATOR:
Stapp explored
pilot ejection seats,

liquid oxygen breathing systems,

tested the impact of windblast,

and subjected a succession
of Air Force personnel

to all manner
of experimental contortions.

But he spent the most time
studying G-force limits:

how the intense acceleration
and deceleration

encountered in a rocket
or high-speed jet

affected the human body.

The military maintained
that any force beyond 18Gs,

or 18 times the pull of gravity,
would be fatal.

Stapp helped design a series

of faster and faster
rocket sleds

to challenge that assumption.

Imagine a soapbox racer
made of aluminum

on a railroad track

with rockets on the back of it

which would be fired
down the track

and then slammed to a stop
in just a few seconds.

NARRATOR:
Stapp rode the sleds himself,

each time ramping up the speed
and the G-force

pressing on his body.

He cracked ribs,
lost six fillings,

and broke both of his wrists.

"I prefer to take the physical
punishment personally,"

he told one observer,

"rather than risk
the court-martial

for killing
some unlucky sergeant."

He got up to over 300 miles
an hour and pulled 38Gs.

And when he told his superiors
that he had survived 38Gs,

they told him
to cease and desist immediately.

RYAN:
Stapp used to say,

"I always follow orders
when they make sense."

And he always pushed it
a little farther

than his superiors
were comfortable with.

NARRATOR:
On December 10, 1954,

Stapp took his experiment
to its extreme.

RYAN:
There were nine rocket engines
on the back of that sled.

And when they fired, Stapp said
that he lost all orientation

as he shot down this track
in excess of 630 miles per hour.

At the end of the track,

Stapp slammed to a full stop
in 1.35 seconds.

KENNEDY:
It was the equivalent

to ejecting from an airplane
at 30,000 feet.

And he was out to prove

that a pilot could do that
in an ejection seat and survive.

KILANOWSKI:
The most serious thing
that happened

was the hemorrhaging
into his retinas.

He got out of the rocket sled,

he thought he was
permanently blind.

KENNEDY:
He was taken
to the base hospital

where gradually,
his vision came back.

He had two black eyes,

but other than that,
he was fine.

NARRATOR:
John Paul Stapp

had set an almost inconceivable
G-force record of 46.2

and was heralded as
"The Fastest Man on Earth."

BILGER:
What's wonderful about Stapp,
he's not just a daredevil.

He is an explorer in the sense
that he never is satisfied.

There's always the next frontier
that he wants to go to.

JOSEPH KITTINGER:
I was stationed
at Holloman Air Force Base

and I was
in the fighter test section.

And one day, our boss called
all the test pilots into a room

and he said, "Gentlemen,
we're going into space."

"Dr. Stapp has a space program

and he's looking
for a volunteer."

And when he said that,
there was a lot of laughter,

because space was something
that Buck Rodgers did.

Pilots were not going to go
into space.

But I always thought that
anytime anything new

that's never been done before
is exciting,

so I immediately put my hand up.

NARRATOR:
John Paul Stapp
had been promoted

to chief of the Aeromedical
Field Laboratory

at Holloman Air Force Base
in New Mexico.

He needed
Captain Joseph Kittinger

to help conduct a series
of zero-gravity experiments,

testing the reaction of the
human body to weightlessness.

KENNEDY:
Dr. Stapp was a visionary.

He could see that we were going
to keep going higher and faster

and that eventually,
we would reach space.

And he wanted to be sure

that when we did finally cross
that threshold,

we would be ready.

RYAN:
All his life,

he had watched the advances
that mankind had made,

and he complained all the time
about the fact

that we're always
underestimating man.

He said mankind
can do amazing things

if we will just believe in it

and do the hard work necessary
to make it possible.

NARRATOR:
For his next experiment,

Stapp wanted to study
a person in space...

Or at least as close
as he could get.

For this, he would now turn

to the oldest aerial vehicle
known to man.

NARRATOR:
In 1783, the first
hot air balloon

lifted a menagerie
of farm animals

several hundred feet
above the palace of Versailles,

amazing Louis XVI
and his court of onlookers.

Later that year,
Frenchman Jacques Charles

became one of the first humans
to view the world from the air.

"Such utter calm.

Such an astonishing view,"
he recounted.

"Seeing all these wonders,

what fool could wish to hold
back the progress of science?"

RICHARD HOLMES:
No one knew what it was like
up there.

No one had been up there.

If a balloon went into a cloud,
would everybody be electrocuted?

What would happen
as you got nearer the sun?

How high can we go?

NARRATOR:
Throughout the 18th
and early 19th century,

bigger and better balloons

lifted adventurers higher
and higher into the sky,

sending them to heights
beyond 20,000 feet.

Then, in 1862, a British
meteorologist and his pilot

unwittingly ventured
above 30,000 feet

and discovered, to their horror,

the limit of earth's
hospitable atmosphere.

There's a famous lithograph

which shows Coxwell and Glaisher
at seven miles,

with Coxwell in the hoop,
tilting backwards

and Glaisher slumped
against the basket.

They were suffering
from oxygen deprivation,

which first of all
affects your sight

and then your muscular strength.

NARRATOR:
They managed to descend
in the nick of time.

A new frontier
had been discovered.

Far from deterring
aerial explorers,

this forbidding death zone

would lure them farther
and farther into the clouds.

BILGER:
It's an ancient human urge,
to go as high up as you can.

Just simply to touch the sky,
it's one of those primal urges.

Human beings had spent
their entire evolution

confined to the surface
of the earth.

And suddenly,

we have this three-dimensional
space opening up above us.

KENNEDY:
We live in the troposphere,

which is the layer
of the atmosphere

closest to the earth's surface.

It's where there's enough
atmospheric pressure,

enough oxygen to sustain life.

It goes up to an altitude
of about 35,000 feet.

The next layer up
is the stratosphere.

RYAN:
The stratosphere was really
the new frontier.

We knew that the air
was very thin,

we knew it was very, very cold,
but we didn't know much else.

The balloonists were the first
ones that went up there

and exposed themselves
to those conditions.

NARRATOR:
In 1931, sealed inside
an innovative pressurized

and oxygenated gondola,

Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard
rose to over 51,000 feet,

marking the first successful
foray into the stratosphere.

Then in 1933,

the Soviets claimed that
they had exceeded 60,000 feet

in their first
high-altitude balloon.

Within a year,
the United States Army Air Corps

and the National
Geographic Society

announced "Project Explorer,"
a joint venture

that hoped to send
three Army officers

to a record 75,000 feet.

RYAN:
It was conceived partly
for scientific reasons,

but also because we were in...

Even though it wasn't
being called this yet...

A space race with the Russians.

And the way the score was kept
was altitude records.

NARRATOR:
The balloon alone weighed in
at over 5,000 pounds.

Two and a half acres
of cotton fabric

had to be glued together using
300 gallons of rubber cement.

The massive contraption

was assembled on-site
in South Dakota

by more than 100 troops
from a nearby Army base.

Three million cubic feet
of hydrogen gas,

pumped through canvas tubes,
was needed

to lift the gondola,
the three men,

and over a ton
of scientific equipment.

RYAN:
One of the big issues
they wanted to solve

was the problem of cosmic rays.

When you get
above the troposphere,

you are exposed to very strong
particles of radiation

coming from outer space.

They thought of them
as cosmic bullets.

When they hit the earth's
atmosphere, they diffuse.

But if you're going to be
in the stratosphere

for extended periods of time,

they didn't really know how
dangerous that was going to be.

FRENCH:
They thought cosmic rays
might make people sterile.

They might go into their eyes
and make them blind.

They might affect their brain.

There were many, many theories
along those lines.

NARRATOR:
On July 28, 1934,
Explorer lifted off.

Americans were captivated

by a live radio broadcast
of the event.

RADIO ANNOUNCER:
The year's greatest scientific
air adventure.

For the glory of the Army

and the study of the mysterious
cosmic rays,

they risk their lives
exploring the stratosphere.

KENNEDY:
They were almost within range
of setting an altitude record

when the balloon started to rip.

The bottom fell out
of the balloon

and then it became kind of
a hydrogen-filled parachute.

NARRATOR:
As the hole widened,
they picked up speed.

Plummeting towards earth,

it was clear the men would have
no choice but to bail out.

Then, at only 5,000 feet,
the balloon burst into flames.

(fire crackling)

RYAN:
The pilots aboard
were actually very lucky.

They were able to crawl out
and parachute safely.

It couldn't have gone any worse
unless they had been killed.

FRENCH:
The Explorer Project balloonists

were pushing the technology
to the absolute limit

and in many ways beyond
what was safe at the time.

But America wants to get
an altitude record.

It's a matter
of national prestige.

NARRATOR:
Within a year,
a sizeable insurance claim

allowed the balloonists
to rise again

aboard Explorer II,

the first balloon to use helium
as a lifting gas.

KENNEDY:
Helium doesn't burn,
so it's much safer.

But it doesn't give you quite
as much lift as hydrogen does,

so you had to have
a larger balloon.

They also reduced
the crew size to two

so the capsule was lighter.

NARRATOR:
With dawn breaking,

Army Air Corps Captain
Albert Stevens

and First Lieutenant
Orvil Anderson

set off to finally perform their
experiments in the stratosphere.

KENNEDY:
They collected spores,
they did radiation measurements,

they took samples
of the atmosphere.

There was a whole agenda
of science experiments they did

during the flight.

NARRATOR:
The Explorer II balloonists

reached an unprecedented
72,400 feet.

After eight hours in flight,

they landed safely in a field
and received a hero's welcome.

RYAN:
They were really up there.

And it took a lot of guts,
it took a lot of knowhow,

and it took a lot
of problem-solving ability

to get up there
and then get back down safely.

NARRATOR:
A cloth balloon, stuck together
with rubber cement,

had set a new world record.

But the technology of the day
had reached its limit.

Only a revolution in design
would allow explorers

to continue their ascent
towards space.

This is a polyethylene
plastic film.

We find it wrapped
around fruits and vegetables

at the grocery market,
and it has many other uses.

It seems quite flimsy,
but it is really quite strong.

And it will hold air or helium.

NARRATOR:
By the mid-1950s,
John Paul Stapp

was watching the latest in
balloon technology take flight

at his Aeromedical
Field Laboratory

at Holloman Air Force Base.

He seized upon
these aerial platforms

for his space research.

FRENCH:
Balloons were very useful

because you can get something
into near space

and then leave it there
for a while.

If you're sending something up
as high as 100,000 feet

in an airplane or a rocket,

it'll only be up there
for minutes, if not seconds.

A balloon can be up there
for many, many hours,

do a lot of tests,
come down gently.

So balloons were a very good way

of doing many of these
experiments.

NARRATOR:
Dr. David Simons,
a lead researcher at Holloman,

had been sending a variety
of instruments and animals

to altitudes over 100,000 feet.

RYAN:
Simons was taking
all kinds of measurements

with devices they'd sent up.

But the mice and hamsters
couldn't report back

on what happened to them
up there.

As Stapp said, all they do
is sit there and defecate.

He said, "What we really need
is a human being

"aboard one of these flights

so that we can get
observations,"

and so he asked Simons,

"Do you think
we could put a person

"into one of your gondolas
and send them up to 100,000 feet

and then bring them back down
alive?"

And Simons
thought about it awhile,

did some calculations, and said,

"I don't see any reason why
it wouldn't be possible."

NARRATOR:
They devised a plan

to send David Simons himself
high into the stratosphere

to gather data on
"human factors of spaceflight."

But the necessity
of studying a man in space

was a tough sell
to Stapp's Air Force superiors.

FRENCH:
In the mid-1950s,
if you were in the Air Force,

it was almost career suicide
if you mentioned space.

Space travel was seen
as science fiction,

comic book, kid's stuff.

MIKE SMITH:
The ability to put something
into space

didn't even exist yet.

There wasn't one single thing
orbiting the earth but the moon.

KENNEDY:
High-altitude rocketry
was still in its infancy,

so manned space flight

was not regarded
as a respectable endeavor.

There wasn't a piece of the pie
for space research.

Dr. Stapp's challenge was to get
the funding to do the project,

and he was going to get it done
one way or the other.

NARRATOR:
After months of negotiations,
Stapp's perseverance paid off.

In the spring of 1956,

Project Manhigh was approved
with a modest budget.

SMITH:
Manhigh was very specifically
aeromedical research.

The Manhigh Project they saw

as the true stepping stone
to space.

NARRATOR:
The first order of business

was to build a balloon
big enough and light enough

to take a man and a capsule,

filled with hundreds of pounds
of scientific equipment,

above 100,000 feet.

Stapp and Simons
turned to one of the nation's

premier balloon manufacturers,
Winzen Research, in Minneapolis.

Otto Winzen's silvery creations

had been ascending
with Simons' lab animals

for nearly four years now.

His corporation
also supplied balloons

for a series of programs
run by the Navy,

but Manhigh would be
their biggest project by far.

RYAN:
Otto Winzen was a brilliant guy,
but he wasn't a business man.

And so what it really took

to run a manufacturing facility
like Winzen Research

was someone who could manage
the facility,

manage the personnel.

And that's where his wife
Vera Winzen came in.

She actually pioneered
a lot of the processes

that allowed them to build

bigger and bigger
and better and better balloons.

SMITH:
The balloons were laid out
on very long, thin tables.

They would lay out
one section of the balloon

and run a heat sealer
down one edge,

going down the table.

Lay the seal back,

dispense another layer of film,
run a seal,

until they run the closing seal

and then fold it up
and put it in a box.

RYAN:
Because that polyethylene
was so thin,

they had to be extremely careful
about how they worked with it.

The Winzens called them
their "balloon girls."

They worked in stocking feet

and they would check their
fingernails every morning

to make sure there wasn't
a hangnail.

SMITH:
Vera wanted to make sure that
she got the best craftsmanship

and made sure that
everybody cared

about making these balloons
perfect.

NARRATOR:
By the fall of 1956

the first of many balloons
had been completed,

and work on David Simons'
capsule was well underway.

The project was woefully
underfunded,

but Stapp and his team were
masters of improvisation.

RYAN:
The Manhigh gondola
really did look like something

that your crazy uncle built
in the garage.

It was about the size
of a telephone booth.

A man could not stand up
inside the capsule.

And it needed to be that small

because the heavier
the payload is,

the bigger a balloon you need.

So you needed
a pretty small capsule

to make all of this work.

BILGER:
These guys, they're really
kind of cowboys.

They're working on the fringes
of the military,

throwing together spare parts

in incredibly smart,
practical ways.

And they accomplished

a huge amount in a fairly short
amount of time.

NARRATOR:
Prior to sending Simons
into the stratosphere,

Stapp wanted a trial run

with an experienced aviator
in control.

Captain Joseph Kittinger
was the obvious choice.

KITTINGER:
David Simons was
a very serious scientist,

but he was not a test pilot.

And Dr. Stapp knew that
he needed somebody

that knew how to operate
in an emergency.

There's a lot of potential
things that could go wrong.

I spent days in my pressure suit

going over every inch
of that capsule,

going through the procedures.

And I had complete confidence
in the equipment and in myself.

This was going to be
just another test flight for me.

NARRATOR:
Space officially begins

62 miles, or 327,000 feet,
above earth.

FRENCH:
Space is very, very close.

We could drive there in an hour

if we had a car
that could go straight up.

But you don't have to get up
into space

to essentially experience
the conditions of space.

SMITH:
If you're at 100,000 feet,

you're above 99%
of the earth's atmosphere.

You have almost no pressure,

and there is basically
no oxygen.

There is extreme heat
during the day,

extreme cold at night,

so you have almost
all of the same conditions

that you have in space
except for the weightlessness.

If something goes wrong,
you're dead.

FRENCH:
There was a psychological danger
as well.

A lot of doctors thought

that being that high
in the atmosphere

might do very strange things
to a person's mind.

A lot of questions
wouldn't be answered

until the person went into space
or into the upper atmosphere.

RYAN:
Although some Air Force pilots

had arced briefly
above 100,000 feet,

it was just a quick shot.

The Manhigh Project
would be the first mission

to send somebody up and expose
them to those conditions

for a significant amount
of time.

NARRATOR:
In the early hours
of June 2, 1957,

Captain Joseph Kittinger
was ready for his voyage

to the threshold of space.

KITTINGER:
I went into the capsule
with my pressure suit on.

They sealed the capsule up
completely airtight

and put me on back
of a pickup truck.

And we drove 12 miles
to the airfield

at South St. Paul, Minnesota.

Dr. Stapp of course was there,
and Simons, and I'm ready to go.

NARRATOR:
By first light,

the Winzen Research crew
had preparations well under way.

With the balloon
nearly inflated,

the capsule, now wrapped
in several layers

of Mylar insulation,
was rolled into position.

Otto Winzen gave it
one final inspection.

BILGER:
There's something absolutely
wonderful and dramatic

about a balloon.

This device that's both this
huge feat of human engineering,

but is also completely
at the mercy of the atmosphere.

SMITH:
It's scary and beautiful
at the same time.

You have all these loose folds
of material hanging down

from this little bubble
of helium in the top.

The higher you go,

as the atmospheric pressure
goes down,

that bubble of helium expands

and completely inflates
the balloon.

It always amazes me.

KITTINGER:
I went up at about
800 foot per minute.

And when I went through
72,000 feet,

I gave a salute to Anderson
and Stevens,

because I was now beating
their record

that had been there since 1935.

I was just amazed
at how beautiful it was.

The transition from the blue
at the horizon

to the dark sky overhead.

It's absolutely black
in the middle of the day.

Pretty close to 90,000 feet,

I realized that my oxygen system
was not working quite right.

RYAN:
As the balloon got up
to 96,000 feet,

it was beginning to get dire.

It was really a mystery.

Why was the oxygen supply
being depleted so fast,

and why were the carbon dioxide
levels rising?

KITTINGER:
I knew that I was going
to be low on oxygen,

so I started letting the gas
out of the balloon

so I can come down.

And I had to be very,
very careful

because if I let out too much,
I would come down too fast

and it would be dangerous
for landing.

RYAN:
He got back into the troposphere

and was able
to pop the portholes

on the Manhigh gondola,
let some fresh air in.

He was just about out of oxygen.

It was very, very close.

He landed in the creek,

and Simons and Stapp rushed over
to the Manhigh gondola,

popped the top off,

and Kittinger was sitting inside
with a big grin on his face.

NARRATOR:
Manhigh I established
an altitude record

of 96,784 feet.

Joseph Kittinger had been higher

than any man had ever been
in a balloon.

RYAN:
It turned out to have been

in some ways
a disastrous flight.

They discovered
that an oxygen valve

had been installed backwards

and that they had been venting
their oxygen supply

to the outside atmosphere
rather than into the capsule.

The radio failed.

All kinds of things went wrong.

And you would think,
total disaster.

But in John Paul Stapp's mind,

it was a perfect test flight,
because in his mind,

that's exactly
what a test flight is for.

"Let's find the problems,
let's fix them."

NARRATOR:
Only a few weeks
after Kittinger's test flight,

David Simons was finally
getting ready

for the project's true mission.

He would travel to the fringes
of the earth's atmosphere

for a full 24 hours,

measuring his own physical
and psychological endurance

in what he called "the greater
cosmic wilderness" of space.

But as the launch date
approached,

Project Manhigh hit
a new obstacle.

Congress slashed funding

to all military research
and development.

The project was already
nearly ten times over budget,

and Stapp had been raiding
other programs

to cover the expenses.

Now, Project Manhigh
would have to be shut down.

FRENCH:
The trouble with the Manhigh
program in many ways was

that the people
who were running it

were really the only people
that knew how successful it was.

And it was very, very hard
to persuade other people

to understand that what
they were doing was important.

KILANOWSKI:
The Air Force priority
was not space.

So the Manhigh budget
was a shoestring budget.

And Dr. Stapp was always
very innovative

in getting more money
and more equipment.

But there were limits to what
even he could accomplish.

NARRATOR:
Just as Stapp and Simons
were about to admit defeat,

Otto Winzen announced
that he and Vera would step in

to cover the shortfall.

The project was back on.

As Simons would later recount,

"I was as happy as a
five-year-old on Christmas Day."

FRENCH:
Simons was a scientist
who had a great personal stake

in the mission
he was about to undertake.

Unlike some of the astronauts
that came later,

who would be essentially doing
somebody else's experiments,

Manhigh II was going to be the
culmination of Simons' career.

NARRATOR:
In preparation for his launch,

Simons did one final check
of the capsule,

including the electrical
control panel

and a new and improved
air supply system.

RYAN:
Stapp said the goal
of putting David Simons up there

was to find out, can he survive?

And can he do useful work
in that environment?

They even taped
a piece of photographic film

to David Simons's forearm
so that they could track

where the cosmic rays
impacted his body.

You don't want to say
he was a guinea pig,

but he was
the closest thing to that

as he sat sealed
inside that capsule,

getting ready to launch.

NARRATOR:
Finally, in the early hours
of August 19,

Simons was transported
to the launch site,

an open-pit iron mine
two hours north of Minneapolis.

I never get tired
of seeing a launch.

You think of how thin
this material is,

how much the balloon itself
weighs,

how much the payload weighs,

and how much lift
is in that balloon.

Not like a rocket with a bunch
of fire and noise;

it's something completely
unique and beautiful.

NARRATOR:
A mobile command center
allowed Stapp and Winzen

to keep in contact with Simons
throughout the flight.

NARRATOR:
As the balloon leveled off
above 101,000 feet,

Simons focused on his regimen

of over 25 experiments
and observations.

FRENCH:
He's looking
at radiation meters,

looking at pressure meters,

looking at his respiration,
his perspiration.

He can describe
what it's like personally

and tell the people
on the ground

exactly what's happening to him.

NARRATOR:
Simons settled in,
radioing back,

"I have a ringside view
of the heavens."

"Where the atmosphere merged

with the colorless blackness
of space," he later recalled,

"the sky was so heavily
saturated

"with this blue-purple color
that it was hard to comprehend,

"like a musical note

"which is beautifully vibrant,
but so high

"that it lies almost beyond
the ear's ability to hear,

"leaving you certain
of its brilliance

"but unsure whether
you actually heard it

or dreamed of its beauty."

HOLLINGS:
The most beautiful descriptions

come from the balloonists
who are that high up,

and they can suddenly see

this other universe,

this dark, empty, fascinating,
glittering universe.

BILGER:
The willingness to put yourself
in extreme danger

simply to satisfy your curiosity

is one of the oldest
human impulses.

You know, there weren't
new continents to explore,

but there was this place
right above us.

We were able to exert
that human impulse to get there.

NARRATOR:
After 32 hours aloft,
David Simons returned to earth.

The Manhigh team had made
history on the edge of space.

Simons was put on the cover
of LIFE magazine,

and the New York Times
celebrated him

as "The First Space Man."

RYAN:
Everybody connected
with the project,

including John Paul Stapp,

thought that this was going
to be the mission

that brought space research
into the fore with the Air Force

and really got them
the respect and the funding

that they thought they deserved.

What happened in fact was,

in spite of the celebrity
that David Simons experienced,

they had pretty much exhausted
their funding,

and they did not have
enough money

even to do the full analysis

of the data they'd gathered
on the flight,

much less begin seriously
talking about another flight.

(beeping)

ANNOUNCER:
Until two days ago,

that sound had never been heard
on this earth.

Suddenly, it has become as much
a part of 20th century life

as the whirr
of your vacuum cleaner.

On October the 4th, 1957,

the Soviets announce,
"Hey, guess what?

We've got Sputnik orbiting
the earth, and you don't."

For Americans,
it is a genuine shock.

NARRATOR:
For a decade,
the Americans and the Soviets

had been vying
for geopolitical dominance.

Now, Sputnik had caught
the United States

completely off-guard.

Almost overnight,

putting a man in space
became a national priority.

Suddenly,
people were more interested

in what we were doing.

Dr. Stapp was now not looked at
as a mad scientist,

but as a man of vision.

Very, very quickly,
Manhigh III planning began.

And now this wasn't
just going to be

a scientific research flight.

This was now seen as
the prototype for spaceflight.

NARRATOR:
Candidates for Manhigh III

were put through a rigorous
gauntlet of tests

that would become the basis for
qualifying future astronauts.

FRENCH:
They were trying
to eliminate anybody

who had even the slightest
medical or psychological flaw.

They would be put
in isolation chambers,

not knowing how long
they would be in there.

They were subjected
to intense cold, intense heat.

They were rotated, spun,
and tumbled every possible way

and asked to do technical work.

It was a very, very grueling
selection process.

NARRATOR:
By September of 1958,

Manhigh III had its man,
a 26-year-old Air Force pilot

with a master's degree
in engineering

named Clifton McClure.

Three weeks later,
Manhigh III took flight

and McClure was put
to his ultimate test.

As he rose
into the stratosphere,

his capsule began to overheat.

KENNEDY:
At almost 100,000 feet,

they notice his voice
is getting kind of sluggish.

So they ask him to report
his body temperature,

and it's already 104.1.

So the decision was made:
bring him down.

NARRATOR:
During the descent,
a radio malfunction

led the ground crew to believe
that McClure was unconscious.

After two harrowing hours,

the capsule landed within
a few miles of the launch site.

RYAN:
They ran to the gondola,

and McClure was pulling
his helmet off and grinning.

They took his temperature...
It was more than 108 degrees.

Nobody could believe that
the man was still conscious.

NARRATOR:
Clifton McClure
had turned out to be

the ideal astronaut prototype,

the very definition of what
would come to be known

as "The Right Stuff."

But by the time his heroic
mission was complete,

the tides had turned,
once and for all,

against Project Manhigh.

A week earlier,
NASA had started its operations,

and soon,
their manned space program,

Project Mercury,
would be receiving

all the public attention
and all the government funding.

KENNEDY:
NASA was given responsibility
for manned space flight.

The Air Force was told
to get out of that business.

NARRATOR:
The new space agency
asked John Paul Stapp

for his assistance in selecting
their first astronauts.

Stapp agreed,

and used his regimen of physical
and psychological tests

to help reduce the pool
of 69 candidates

down to the world-famous
Mercury Seven.

Clifton McClure was turned down
by the Mercury program

because he was too tall.

RYAN:
It was tough
for the men and women

who had been involved
with Project Manhigh

to see all of their glory stolen
by NASA and the rocket program.

They were not allowed
to bask in the glory

that the Mercury astronauts
were able to experience.

NARRATOR:
By the summer of 1960,

John Paul Stapp was back at work
with the Air Force

on one last high-altitude
balloon experiment.

He named it Project Excelsior,
Latin for "ever upward,"

and once again put
Joseph Kittinger at the helm.

RYAN:
For Stapp,

there was one problem
that hadn't been solved yet,

and that was the problem
of emergency escape.

What if a high-altitude pilot
or an astronaut

needs to get out of the vehicle?

How do you get them
from the upper stratosphere

and back into a warm,
breathable atmosphere

in a reasonable amount of time?

KITTINGER:
If a man opened his parachute
at 100,000 feet

and it takes him 30,
40 minutes to get down,

he'd be dead.

The challenge is to get
from 100,000 feet

down to 20,000 feet

before you can open
the parachute.

RYAN:
They knew that the human body,

falling through
the upper atmosphere,

tends to go in what's called
a flat spin...

Like a record album
on a platter,

faster and faster
until the pilot would pass out.

What they needed was to test

a new kind
of multi-stage parachute

which would keep you
in a stable attitude

until you got down
to where you could open

a traditional parachute
and fall the rest of the way.

That was Kittinger's mission.

NARRATOR:
After 90 minutes in flight,

Kittinger leveled off
at 102,800 feet,

breaking the altitude record
set by David Simons

three years earlier.

KITTINGER:
So I'm there
and I'm standing up

and I'm looking up
at the horizon.

I have this phenomenal,
beautiful view.

I stood there
for four or five seconds,

absorbing the situation
I was in.

And then I said a prayer
and I jumped.

The image of Kittinger
falling through space,

this tiny speck
high above the earth,

it's amazing.

He's between
these different worlds.

BILGER:
When you're that high
above the earth,

there's no sound,
there's no wind,

there's nothing you feel.

He's just falling silently
through this void.

RYAN:
The parachute worked
exactly as planned.

He began to gradually slow down
as the air thickened around him.

And he got to about 17,000 feet,

where he pulled the ripcord
on his main parachute,

it opened, and he knew that
he was going to make it.

FRENCH:
There's always been a drive
to go further and higher,

but in this case,

the overwhelming drive was
to make people safe.

It wasn't a quest for glory,
it was a quest for knowledge,

and there's something
even more beautiful about that.

NARRATOR:
By the time Kittinger
touched down,

he had survived
the longest free fall

and the longest
parachute jump ever,

nearly 20 miles in a total
of 13 minutes and 45 seconds.

He was hailed as a national hero

in a final tribute
to the original space men.

What we did on Manhigh
and Excelsior

were just small,
incremental bits of knowledge

that were made possible
by a team of people

that were working
and dedicating their lives

for the future
of the space program.

FRENCH:
Sending people
into the upper atmosphere

on a large balloon

doesn't seem as incredible as
leaving footprints on the moon.

But America may not have gotten
to the moon

if it wasn't for pioneers like
Stapp and Kittinger and Simons

asking the questions
that needed to be answered

before we could get on with
the business of flying in space.

SMITH:
This was a good example
of what a very small group

of very dedicated,
very focused people can do

out of sheer will.

HOLMES:
There is an absolute link

from Icarus
to the balloon to rockets.

They are all part of one long
stairway to the stars.

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.