Larry Sargeant - Nick Piantanida - October 24th 2012
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At this weeks Little Falls Rotary Meeting, Rotarian Larry Sargeant
gave a presentation on Nick Piantanida, as a follow up to the recent
record setting high altitude decent by Felix Baumgartner.
Piantanida had a goal of setting a new sky diving record by jumping
from a balloon floating from 115,000 feet above the earth. He called
his project ‘Strato-Jump’. His first attempt on October
22nd 1965 was a bust. His balloon malfunctioned just 18 minutes into
his flight, forcing him to bail out at only 16,000 feet. With the
press watching, he ingloriously touched down in a rubbish dump.
Disappointed but not despondent, he raised more money for a second
attempt, which came on February 2nd 1966 on a frigid morning in Sioux
Falls, South Dakota. All was going well when he achieved a height
of 123,500 feet (21.21 miles) above the earth. On the edge of success,
failure struck. As he prepared to jump from his gondola, he could
not disconnect the hose that fed oxygen to his suit. Forced to jettison
the gondola’s main balloon, this allowed the capsule to fall
to earth. When the balloon was released, he dropped 25,000 feet at
600 miles per hour before the capsule cargo chute opened.
Undaunted, he tried again on May 1st 1966. As the balloon reached
57,000 feet, the ground crew heard a sudden ‘whoosh’ and
heard Nick say “Emergen…”. The ground crew jettisoned
the balloon and allowed the capsule to float back to earth.
No one really knows what happened but it is believed that Nick Piantanida
inexplicably opened his visor on his helmet and the sudden decompression
and loss of oxygen resulted in him suffering sever brain damage. He
lingered on in a coma for four month until his death on August 25th
1966 at age 34. His altitude record for lighter than air flight stood
for more that 35 years and he was the last man to take a balloon into
the upper stratosphere.
Pictured with Larry Sargeant is Ann Carlisto. |
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