American Experience (1988) s28e09 Episode Script
Space Men
1
(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.
♪
♪
ANNOUNCER:
"American Experience:
Space Men"
♪
(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.
♪
♪
ANNOUNCER:
"American Experience:
Space Men"
♪