Breaking the Chains of Gravity Read online

  Heartened by Simons’s likeminded thoughts, Stapp upped the ante. He didn’t just want to launch a man, he wanted to keep him at altitude. He asked Simons whether it would be possible for one of these capsules to get a man to an altitude of one hundred thousand feet and keep him there for at least twenty-four hours. Simons said yes. Then Stapp asked if Simons would be willing to make the flight himself. For a scientist accustomed to being overshadowed by the fighter jocks who got the glory assignments, this was a rare chance for Simons to carry out his experiments in the actual test environment. He wouldn’t have to rely on someone else’s description of the environment, matching their retellings to the data to create a complete picture of the test. He would be the scientist and the subject all in one, reaping benefits from both sides. Yes, Simons told Stapp, he wanted to go up in the balloon. The new project underway, Stapp appointed Simons director of the Space Biology Program. Completing the trifecta that would send a man into the stratosphere, Stapp and Simons sought out Otto Winzen, hoping to bring his expert knowledge of balloons to bear on their program.

  By the summer of 1955, the balloon engineer was partnered with the two air force doctors. The trio reasoned that a twenty-four-hour manned flight to 115,000 feet was feasible and would give them the data they were after. The air force also came on board, though with some reservations. The chief of the Human Factors Division at the Air Research and Command Headquarters provisionally signed off on the project in August of that year, providing the program didn’t overlap with other balloon projects. One competing program was called Stratolab, a navy program funded by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation. It was an offshoot of the unrealized Helios program Winzen had briefly worked on to fly a laboratory above 96 percent of the atmosphere. The ultimate goal was to measure the near-space environment with almost no distortion from the atmosphere. The air force’s own competing program was one investigating the biophysics of escape, specifically the physiological and psychological aspects of ejecting from an aircraft. This went hand in hand with Stapp’s deceleration studies.

  Stapp and Simons’s project gradually solidified. They named it Project Daedalus. Daedalus, in Greek mythology, was a craftsman and artisan who created wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, whose hubris led him to fly too close to the Sun. But when it turned out that Daedalus was the name of a classified atomic-powered aircraft project, they renamed their ballooning project Man High, which was eventually streamlined to Manhigh. As planning moved forward, the program on the whole was hampered by meager funding and continued wavering interest from the air force. Though Stapp stood firmly behind the project at the local level at Holloman, he still needed to forward the proposal to air force headquarters for approval. Headquarters, unable to justify a manned balloon program simply under the heading of cosmic ray research, was not keen on the program. At the same time there wasn’t enough reason to stop the program from moving forward either. And so Manhigh pressed on under Simons’s rule as project officer operating on Stapp’s all too familiar shoestring budget. Measuring the effects of cosmic rays on human passengers was the principle line of inquiry. Designing the capsule that could keep them alive through the flight was the program’s second major research goal.

  As Manhigh developed, the capsule proved to be the mission’s biggest challenge. Scientists, Simons among them, had been launching balloons with animal passengers for years, but the human passenger demanded a far more complex system, as did the full-day length of the mission. The Manhigh capsule emerged as the most complex manned system designed to date, by necessity larger and far more precise than any animal system. The air force eventually signed a contract with Winzen Research in November 1955, and as the prime contractor, Winzen was responsible for building both the capsule and the balloon, and was also responsible for managing the development, fabrication, maintenance, and modification of the Manhigh capsule throughout the program’s lifetime. And the time frame was short. The contract stipulated that the balloon be ready to fly at the end of January 1956. The first flight was tentatively set for March.

  Project Manhigh’s ambitious time line proved incompatible with its modest budget. Like Stapp had done at Edwards, he and Simons were forced to take whatever bits and pieces they could to bring to life the mission, and specifically the capsule. This piecemeal approach set them behind schedule. March came and went with no capsule and no balloon to show for the Manhigh program. Still, the program was taking steps forward. March brought formal approval from the air force command, though the endorsement demoted cosmic ray research to a secondary project goal behind development of a life support capsule system. As time wore on, the price tag on Manhigh rose steadily from the original projected cost of $29,950 to nearly $240,000 over the course of a year. The addition of launch support and flight tracking crews was partially responsible for the increase, but mechanical improvements to the capsule had raised the price far more. When cost overruns became more than the air force was willing to contribute, Winzen himself stepped in and assumed financial responsibility. Such was his and his company’s dedication to seeing the project through.

  Finally, in the spring of 1957, the Manhigh capsule emerged from its period of high-cost development. Made of an aluminum alloy, the hermetically sealed capsule was an eight-foot-three-inch-tall cylinder with rounded ends, held upright by tubular struts that doubled as a shock absorption system. Close to the top was a band with six portholes. Each faced a different direction and some had angled adjacent mirrors so the occupant could have a full view of the environment around him.

  The capsule itself was pressurized to an equivalent of twenty-six thousand feet with a chemically treated atmosphere that removed carbon dioxide and excess moisture. The capsule pioneered a multigas system: a combination of oxygen, helium, and nitrogen would provide a breathing atmosphere for the pilot and also decrease the risk of a fatal oxygen fire. The cabin was, after all, crammed with electrical systems that could short out and spark at any moment. And though life support was the program’s principle goal, the possibility for disaster remained. As such, a personal oxygen system was included in the capsule should the cabin pressure fail or should Simons need to bail out from altitude, though jumping out and landing by personal parachute wasn’t something he hoped he would have to do. Gathering the best scientific data meant a controlled flight from start to finish. If he had to bail out, he would lose the capsule and possibly the valuable data.

  For constant communications, the capsule was fitted with a high frequency receiver so Simons could talk to the ground controllers. There was a telemetry system as a backup he could use to send messages in Morse code. This system used a series of batteries attached beneath the capsule, each fitted with a small parachute so they could be jettisoned as ballast. There was also a tape recorder on board so Simons could record his thoughts and impressions in real time, preserving his own visual, emotional, and psychological impressions as they happened. His vital signs, such as respiration and heart rate, would be monitored by onboard systems throughout the flight as well. The sheer number of electrical systems meant the Manhigh capsule didn’t need a heating system. With all the instrumentation up and running, the capsule would be a hot, crowded space in which to spend a day. It actually needed a cooling system. The solution was an open container of water. Because water boils at a lower temperature at higher altitudes, an open container would draw heat from the capsule during the flight.

  The completed Manhigh capsule was put through a series of unmanned tests to check out all its systems. Animal flights approximating the weight and oxygen usage of a man tested the capsule’s atmospheric system. A crash-test dummy was dropped from altitude to test the personal parachute Simons would use in an emergency. Coming on the heels of these checkout tests, the first flight was shaping up to be a shakedown mission, one that would work out the remaining kinks before the real science missions could begin. Simons was ready, but Stapp had other ideas.

  Stapp had done enough e
xperimental tests during his tenure with the air force to know that first flights were notoriously plagued by technical issues. He didn’t want Simons flying a checkout flight. He wanted this first flight to go to a test pilot, someone accustomed to testing new vehicles in strange environments who could react quickly in an emergency without losing his cool and sacrificing data collection. Someone, in short, who had a chance of surviving if everything went wrong. He solicited volunteers from the corps of test pilots at Holloman and found a very willing Joe Kittinger.

  Stapp had first met Kittinger before he was flying a T-33 over the Sonic Wind No. 1’s track in the New Mexico desert. Kittinger had volunteered for a mystery assignment that turned out to be one of Stapp’s zero gravity projects; cursory research told the pilot that the flight surgeon was something of a mad genius who not so quietly believed humans could survive a trip into space. Once assigned to Stapp’s project, Kittinger learned his task was to fly a jet in parabolic arcs, climbing at a steep angle then diving back down to give a medical officer in the rear seat brief spurts of weightlessness at the top of each arc. For Kittinger, the very precise flight profile was a fun challenge, something different that required a skill he didn’t normally use when testing an aircraft. For Stapp, Kittinger’s ability to fly a nearly perfect parabola on his first attempt was impressive.

  The first time Kittinger flew a biomedical flight, Simons had been his passenger. The pair went up, and before long Kittinger became so engrossed in the challenging flight profile and Simons so enthralled with the novel sensation that they stayed up long enough to dip into their reserve fuel. Simons remained unfazed as Kittinger called down that he was going to make an emergency landing, completely confident in his pilot’s skill as he watched firetrucks and emergency personnel racing to take their positions along the runway. Only when Kittinger lost an engine and found that his landing gear light refused to illuminate did Simons start to become concerned. He knew Kittinger was an ace pilot, but also knew that one engine and no landing gear was not a great situation. It turned out that the landing gear was down after all, and Kittinger managed a textbook landing with one engine. A stroke of good luck, he said.

  Between theses parabolic flights and his participation in the Sonic Wind program, volunteering had paid off for Kittinger. So while he remained a pilot with the Fighter Test Section at Holloman, he found himself on loan to the Aero Medical Laboratory fairly frequently, his third time as the alternate pilot for Project Manhigh. Manhigh was something completely foreign to Kittinger. The capsule designed to simply hang below the balloon was a far cry from the precision flight paths he’d grown used to flying. But he had also noticed that on all the parabolic flights he’d flown he had never once been sick. It was something scientists at the Aero Medical Lab had noticed as well. They were convinced pilots would be the nation’s first spacemen, and now Kittinger was a pioneer in that field.

  Under Manhigh, Kittinger and Simons went through the same preflight preparations. Stapp outlined four basic tests each man would have to pass to qualify for a Manhigh flight. The first was a claustrophobia test. Not only did the Manhigh capsule barely afford its occupant any space to move around, the partial pressure suit severely restricted a pilot’s movements. It was designed to constrict his body, and it was also deliberately too short in the torso to take into account the suit’s expansion at altitude. This meant the pilot would be kept in an awkward, hunched over position during all prelaunch activities and the beginning of his ascent before the suit loosened up. Claustrophobia was the greatest potential psychological challenge, and so both Kittinger and Simons went through a twenty-four-hour test in a confined space.

  The second test was a decompression test in a chamber simulating one hundred thousand feet, the capsule’s planned peak altitude. Both pilots had to be physically and psychologically ready to react to a sudden loss of pressure. And because a loss of pressure might mean bailing out at altitude, both men also had to qualify as parachute jumpers. Kittinger did his training at the naval air station in El Centro, California, where a small group of air force and navy pilots tested new parachute designs. His first jump was so exhilarating that Kittinger stuck around and made nine more jumps that day, earning his navy parachute wings.

  The final criterion Stapp had laid out was the most necessary one, that Simons and Kittinger both learn to pilot balloons and obtain their free balloon pilot’s license. For the Civil Aeronautics Administration, this meant six instructional flights lasting two hours, one controlled flight to ten thousand feet, and one hour-long solo flight. Simons and Kittinger practiced in the two-man Sky Car training vehicle over farmlands in Minnesota. The duo learned how to manage ballast, dropping weight to lighten the capsule and ascend. They learned how to vent helium, losing buoyancy to gently lower toward the ground. It was a very different experience than jet flying for Kittinger and a very different learning curve, but the quiet stillness was peaceful and both men eventually learned the intricacies of balloon flight.

  Throughout the training process, Kittinger asked thousands of questions and made almost as many suggestions. He was extremely invested in the program. He was, after all, putting his life in the hands of the Winzen engineers. He wanted to make sure they knew him as an individual, not just a name on a report. Simons, meanwhile, grew suspicious of Kittinger’s motivation for getting involved with Manhigh in the first place. Still dedicated to Manhigh’s scientific aims, Simons wondered if Kittinger, a newly avid parachutist, didn’t just want to bail out and parachute down from Manhigh’s peak altitude, even if the move meant compromising the success of the flight. His distrust of Kittinger growing, Simons finally confronted Stapp about Manhigh’s inaugural flight, arguing that he ought to be the pilot. But Stapp remained firm in his conviction that the first flight go to Kittinger, the test pilot. That he would still be making the first research flight only partially mollified Simons.

  Kittinger, for his part, approached his Manhigh flight more like a scientist than a fighter jock. Working with Stapp had instilled in him a fascination with the science and testing aspect of research flights, and as the flight neared he devoted an increasing amount of his time to the Manhigh capsule. He was determined to ensure everything stayed on schedule. With the launch just weeks away, Kittinger learned that the teamsters union at the Winzen plant was planning to go on strike. It was possible the plastic used to make the balloon might not be delivered on time due to the labor stoppage, ultimately delaying fabrication of the balloon and setting the program behind schedule. Unwilling to wait and see whether this worst-case scenario came to pass, Kittinger took matters into his own hands. Risking personal embarrassment and trouble for the air force, he hopped into an old C-47 military transport plane and flew up to Terre Haute, Indiana, where the plastic for the balloon was made. With a small cohort of conspirators, they loaded crates of balloon material into the plane and flew it covertly into Minneapolis under cover of night. From the airport, the crates were loaded onto a truck and delivered to the Winzen plant mere hours before the strike was scheduled to start.

  With the material at the Winzen plant, the balloon came together under the watchful eye of Vera Winzen herself. She oversaw construction of a massive system of tables where the sixty long gores of plastic were heat-welded together before the seams were sealed with bands that would distribute the weight of the capsule evenly around the balloon. Her team of women then inspected every inch of the balloon looking for pinholes or tiny tears, anything that would compromise its structural integrity once inflated at altitude. The women worked in stocking feet and submitted to daily fingernail inspections to ensure they didn’t tear the delicate plastic, a rigorous example of quality control Kittinger appreciated as he was trusting his life to the strength of this whisper-thin plastic.

  About an hour before midnight on June 1, 1957, Kittinger had passed his final medical exam and was wriggling into his partial pressure suit at the Winzen research plant in Minneapolis. The capsule was also going through its final checks
: its liquid oxygen system filled; chemicals added to the air regeneration unit; and the electrical and communications systems given a final check. An hour and a half later, Kittinger was sealed inside the Manhigh capsule, which took on the moniker of Manhigh 1 for this first flight. He left his faceplate open, taking advantage of the capsule’s pressurized environment as nitrogen was bled from the cabin and replaced by helium, a gas that would reduce the possibility of Kittinger succumbing to the bends in the event of a sudden decompression, a potentially lethal sickness caused by nitrogen bubbling out of the blood. Kittinger half sat and half crouched in the capsule for hours as technicians ran a second series of checks before loading him onto a truck and driving the twenty miles to the launch site at Fleming Field near South Saint Paul. Still in the predawn hours, Kittinger watched through the small porthole windows as technicians buzzed around the capsule making the final preparations, backlit by the lights illuminating his capsule. As the Sun began creeping up above the horizon, an early morning fog swirled around the launch platform imbuing the scene with an eerie, surreal feeling. The whole team was there, Simons and Stapp included. After working for years with a shoestring budget, the men and women who had devoted their time, and in the Winzens’ case, their own money, were finally seeing the results of their hard work.