American Experience

NARRATOR

By the fall of 1956, the first of many balloons had been completed and work on David Simon s 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. 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 gonna be just another test flight for me.