Pie in the Sky?

Welcome to the new space race, in which three rival highfliers are vying to be the first to skydive from 25 miles above the earth -- a long-shot feat they hope won't turn them to bacon

Sterns says she's the most qualified to make the jump, though she admits she "just might disintegrate."  Heinz Kluetmeier

On the day Joe Kittinger jumped into the void, the New Mexico sky was astir with clouds as white and light as snowflakes. As the sun came up on Aug. 16, 1960, Kittinger had climbed into the gondola of a 25-story helium balloon and ridden it higher than anyone had ever soared in nonpowered flight -- to the fringes of outer space.

When he reached 102,800 feet above sea level, nearly 20 miles up, the 31-year-old Air Force test pilot shuffled out of his pressurized cabin to a platform marked highest step in the world. He took a big gulp of pure oxygen. He said a little prayer. Then he flopped over the side in a literal leap of faith.

Down he dropped, through the thin, -100° upper atmosphere, through eerie regions of blinding sunshine and deep indigo skies, through the snowflake clouds. Like Major Tom in the David Bowie song, Captain Joe floated in a most peculiar way. "I was in suspended animation with no sense of sound or movement," recalls the original Man Who Fell to Earth. "I felt like I'd walked off a porch but landed nowhere."

Thirteen seconds after Kittinger bailed, a three-foot drogue parachute snapped open to keep him from spinning into unconsciousness, the common fate of a person who tumbles end over end at 600 mph. However, it did little to brake his free fall, which reached an estimated speed of 614 mph, just short of the speed of sound. Finally, after 4 1/2 minutes and 85,300 feet, his main chute deployed automatically, and he sailed safely to the ground. His had been the highest skydive and the longest free fall in history.

More than four decades later Kittinger's records still stand. But now, in the 21st century's first space race, would-be aeronauts from Australia (Rodd Millner), France (Michel Fournier) and the United States (Cheryl Stearns) are vying with one another in a me-first competition to eclipse his marks. Their projects -- respectively dubbed Space Dive, Le Grand Saut (The Big Jump) and StratoQuest -- each involve ballooning to 130,000 feet (more than 24 miles up) and then hurtling headfirst to earth in modified space shuttle togs. All three space jumpers expect it will take maybe three hours to ascend, 10 minutes to descend and a nanosecond for a goof-up to pulverize them into a million pieces.

"If I'm not in the shuttlecock position -- 70 degrees -- who knows what might happen?" says Stearns, a U.S. Airways pilot and seven-time world skydiving champ. "Imagine an airplane on which the wings start tearing off. Except that the wings would be my arms and legs. On the other hand, I might just disintegrate."

Without a drogue, humans free-falling from such a rarefied altitude could reach a velocity of about 1,100 mph (or Mach 1.5 -- nearly as fast as the Concorde) before the thickening atmosphere slows them down. Whoever takes the first space plunge looks to become the first human to break the sound barrier unaided. "It's extreme science," says Millner. "No one can be sure what effect going from transonic to supersonic will have on the human body." He's pretty sure what will happen if his suit springs a leak and depressurizes. "Above 63,000 feet without pressure, your blood boils and you explode," he says, "or turn to bacon."

Kittinger won't give any of these daredevils their due. A Vietnam vet who spent 11 months as an involuntary guest at the Hanoi Hilton in the early '70s, Kittinger prides himself on his radar; even from his Florida home he can make instant readings of the true measure of things. And he thinks most of the attempts on his balloon jumping record have one thing in common: hot air. "A week after I set the record, people started phoning to tell me they were gonna break it," snorts the gruff, bluff pensioner of 73. "I average about one call a month. I even got one from a guy with no legs.

"All these callers have had the same idea, all have the nerve, but hardly any have the cash to pull the thing off," Kittinger continues. "A lot of them publicly announce their intention to jump, in the vain hope that someone will come forward with money." The projects almost invariably gray into nonexistence. "I try to stay as far away from these people as I can," he says. "If they get killed, I'll get blamed. I don't want to be part of a tragedy."

There have been only two recorded assaults on Kittinger's record. "Both jumpers were killed," says Per Lindstrand, the Swedish balloon maker Stearns hopes to hire to engineer StratoQuest. "At least they were consistent." In 1962 Soviet colonel Pyotr Dolgov hopped out of his Red Army balloon at 93,970 feet. His suit instantly depressurized, and, as skydivers say, the world came up and hit him.

Four years later New Jersey truck driver Nicholas Piantanida made three attempts on Kittinger's caboodle. He aborted his first try, over northern Minnesota, after a six-knot wind decapitated his balloon at 22,700 feet, forcing him to activate his parachute and float back to earth. On number 2 he got to 123,500 feet, which remains the highest flight by a manned balloon. Unfortunately, he couldn't disconnect from his onboard oxygen and drifted down aboard his gondola.

On Piantanida's third go-round, something happened at around 49,000 feet. (In skydiving circles it's believed he didn't breathe enough pure oxygen before takeoff, got the bends and, in his delirium, ripped off his visor.) After hearing his screams over the radio, Piantanida's crew triggered his gondola chute by remote control and brought him back to earth, where he remained in a coma for four months before dying. "Frankly, I wasn't surprised when he got killed," says Kittinger. "The only things you really worry about are the things you don't anticipate having to worry about."

Kittinger worries that in their rush to make the Guinness Book of World Records, his pursuers may be staging elaborate suicides. "What's their purpose?" he asks. His was to test bailout and recovery equipment for future spacemen. "At this point the scientific contribution would be negligible. Most of these people have no sense of the challenges, the physiological changes, how hostile space is. All they care about is setting a record."

That's Fournier's raison d'être. "It's really important for me to be the first," says the 57-year-old retired army major. He's been plotting his Great Leap Downward since 1986, when he says the idea popped into his head, inexplicably and perversely, after watching the Challenger disaster. "This is a race, isn't it?"

Fournier has the pole position, as he's the only one among the three leapers to have equipment and financing in place. (The others are still scrounging for funds and are at least a year from launch.) The balloon that would tow him aloft is being built by Don Cameron, the Brit behind the Breitling Orbiter III, which in 1999 became the first balloon to circumnavigate the globe. Made of clear plastic the thickness and texture of a dry-cleaning bag, the canopy is 230 times the size of the average hot-air balloon. As air pressure decreases with altitude, it will expand to roughly 330 feet by 330 feet -- the size not just of a football field but a small football stadium. "It may look like the world's biggest condom," Fournier says, "but it's really something very beautiful."

On the way up, he will rest comfortably in a capsule that resembles a port-a-potty. Unlike Kittinger, who wore a snug Buck Rogers-esque partial-pressure suit ("It felt like being loved by an octopus"), Fournier will be encased in three layers of clothing: thermal underwear, a pressure suit and an outer layer of carbon-fiber material that will shield him against intense solar radiation. If all goes according to plan, once Fournier leaps, the gondola will detach, its chute will blossom and the balloon will deflate. "It should come down reasonably gently," says Cameron. "It will be one big, flapping mass of polyethylene."

Fournier has been conditioning his mind for Le Grand Saut by practicing yoga, his hands by plunging them into icy water for 10 minutes a day, his eyes by firing at targets at a pistol range. He promises that his $6 million project will be off the ground and in the air as early as next month and no later than September, when jet-stream conditions are favorable.

Denied air clearance by the French government, he plans to take off from a desolate prairie in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. "I'm told he's not gonna survive the jump," Stearns says. A moment later she adds, "He might succeed. I hope he does. I certainly don't want him to get killed."

The prospect of having to eat Fournier's cosmic dust doesn't overly concern Millner's team, either. "No worries," says his publicist, Greg Campbell. "If Fournier goes 130,000 feet, Rodd will go 131,000." A blustery army commando turned Realtor turned movie producer, Millner, 37, has pushed back his launch date a year for lack of swag. To economize, he'll hitch a ride on an Australian Defense Force weather balloon that will fly over Alice Springs, in central Australia.

Stearns dismisses Millner as an "oddball, a hustler who's all ego." The first woman to make the Golden Knights, the U.S. Army's elite skydiving team, she hopes to lift off from McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kans. With a women's record 14,700 jumps (352 in the same day, or once every four minutes) under her belt, the 46-year-old sergeant insists she's the most qualified of the space trio. She's also the most cash-strapped: The $50,000 she has raised so far is all from her own savings. "Talk is cheap," grumbles Lindstrand, who wants $3 million up-front before he'll take her on as a client. "I'm getting tired of people like Cheryl who milk publicity for sponsorships yet achieve nothing."

The crusty Kittinger predicts that whoever leaps first will leap last. "The person will either make it and live or miss it and die," he says. "Make it, and nobody will care about a second attempt. Miss it, and nobody will sponsor one."

Issue date: April 29, 2002

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