not a funny thread!
Joseph William Kittinger II (born July 27, 1928) was a pilot in the United States Air Force. He is most famous for his participation in Project Man High and Project Excelsior.
Born in Tampa, Florida he was educated at the Bolles School, Jacksonville, Florida and the University of Florida. After racing speedboats as a teenager and later completing his aviation cadet training he joined the USAF in March, 1950. He was assigned to the 86th Fighter-Bomber Wing based at Ramstein AFB in West Germany.
In 1954 he was transferred to Holloman AFB in New Mexico and the Air Force Missile Development Center (AFMDC). Kittinger flew the observation plane which monitored Colonel John Paul Stapp's rocket sled run of 632 mph in 1955. Kittinger was impressed by the dedication of Stapp (a pioneer in space medicine). Stapp in turn was impressed with Kittinger's skillful jet piloting, later recommending him for space aviation work. Stapp was to foster the high altitude tests which would lead to Kittinger's record leap. In 1957 as part of Man High he set an interim balloon altitude record of 96,760 feet (29,500 m) in Man High I. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (D.F.C.).
He was then assigned to the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. For Project Excelsior (meaning "ever upward", a name given to the project by Colonel Stapp), as part of research into high altitude bailout, he made a series of three parachute jumps wearing a pressurized suit, from a helium balloon with an open gondola. The first, from 76,400 feet (23,287 m) in November, 1959 was a near tragedy when an equipment malfunction caused him to lose consciousness, but the automatic parachute saved him (he went into a flat spin at a rotational velocity of 120 rpm, the G factor calculated at his extremities was over 22 times that of gravity, setting another record). Three weeks later he jumped again from 74,700 feet (22,769 m). For that return jump Kittinger was awarded the Leo Stevens parachute medal. On August 16, 1960 he jumped from the Excelsior III at 102,800 feet (31,300 m). He was in freefall for 4½ minutes and reached a maximum speed of 614 mph before opening his parachute at 18,000 feet (5,500 m). Pressurization for his right glove malfunctioned during the ascent, causing his hand to swell. He set records for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest freefall and fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere. [1]
According to Kittinger, he broke the speed of sound during that famous highest jump. This may be debatable, as other references give his peak speed at 618 or 614 miles per hour, or mach 0.9. Nevertheless, he occasionally ribs Chuck Yeager about being the first man to break the speed of sound.
The jumps were made in a "rocking-chair" position, descending on his back, rather than the usual delta familiar to skydivers, because he was wearing a 60-lb "kit" on his behind and his pressure suit naturally formed that shape when inflated, a shape appropriate for sitting in an airplane cockpit.
For the series of jumps he was decorated with an oak leaf cluster to his D.F.C. and awarded the C.B. Harmon Trophy by President Dwight Eisenhower.
Back at Holloman AFB he also took part in Project Stargazer on December 13–14, 1962. He and William C. White, an astronomer, took a balloon of equipment to a height of 82,200 feet (25,055 m) and spent over eighteen hours at that height in performing observations.
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Explorers_Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/Kittinger/EX31G1.jpg
http://www.pontes.nl/~natuurkunde/para65232/val/image001.jpg
http://aerofiles.com/kittinger-chute.jpg
― gear (gear), Wednesday, 2 August 2006 22:37 (nineteen years ago)
The death instinct (Thanatos, or Death Drive) was defined by Sigmund Freud, in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond the Pleasure Principle) (1920; English translation 1922).Freud begins the work considering the experience of trauma and traumatic events (particularly the trauma experienced by soldiers returning from World War I). The most curious feature of highly unpleasant experiences for Freud was that subjects often tended to repeat or re-enact them. This appeared to violate the "pleasure principle," the drive of an individual to maximize his or her pleasure. Freud found this repetition of unpleasant events in the most ordinary of cirumstances, even in children's play (such as the celebrated Fort/Da ("Here"/"Gone") game played by Freud's grandson). After hypothesizing a number of causes (particularly the idea that we repeat traumatic events in order to master them after the fact), Freud considered the existence of a fundamental death wish or death instinct, referring to an individual's own need to die. Organisms, according to this idea, were driven to return to a pre-organic, inanimate state—but they wished to do so in their own way. Such a line of thought must be considered as belonging to a cosmological rather than a scientifical framework, and is actually of great antiquity as can be seen in the only surviving fragment of Anaximander, which more or less states the same idea in more general albeit poetical terms.
In psychoanalytical theory, the death instinct (or death drive) opposes Eros. The "death instinct" signals a desire to give up the struggle of life and return to quiescence and the grave. This should not be confused with a similar urge/force destrudo.
― de latebloomer's 2015 youth crew revival (latebloomer), Wednesday, 2 August 2006 23:14 (nineteen years ago)
one year passes...