To appreciate our atmosphere, we’ll rise through its layers, travelling from the planet’s surface, miles up above mountains and the clouds, to the very edge of space. 

 

August 16th, 1960, one man is preparing for a record-breaking journey into the mysterious skies above to a lethal world above 99% of the Earth’s air where an unprotected human would die in seconds, where the temperatures plunge to 67 below and the air pressure is a hundredth of that at the surface. 

 

Colonel Joseph Kittinger will travel almost 20 miles high and then he will jump. This is a key military mission, one of the first steps in the space race. Kittinger will be testing the human body’s resistance to high altitude, low pressure and rapid free fall. He will be trialing new technology (that) he hopes will protect him. 

 

It had never been done before. But we were not there to set a record. We were there to gather information that we needed for our space programme and for our high-flying aviators. 

 

Ground crew prepares his vehicle, a helium ballon and a rudimentary, open-sided gondola, just an open gondola. It was designed just to carry me up there. It was a space platform, an elevator I called it.