Fell upon this... -
http://www.jonathanhagos.com/teaching/the-pursuit-of-flighta-fear-of-falling/This is Joseph Kittinger. The performance I want to show you is footage from his participation in Project Excelsior.

Between 1959 and 1960, Kittinger, then of the United States Air-Force took part in three such projects.
Kittinger's first jump was made from about 76.000 feet, a malfunction in his parachute caused it to open after
2 seconds into his fall, it wrapped around his neck causing him to lose consciousness. He went into a spin of
120 revolutions per minute, where the G force at his extremities were calculated to be over 22 times the force
of gravity. Fortunately Kittinger was jolted from unconsciousness by his automatic emergency parachute.
Three weeks later he performed his second jump was from 74,700 feet with no reported incidents.

On his third and final jump, this time from 102,000 feet the pressurization for his right glove malfunctioned
causing his hand to swell up to 4 times its normal size.
He fell for four minutes and 36 seconds, reaching a maximum sped of 614 miles per hour, setting, amongst
other records, the fastest speed by a human being through the atmosphere of the earth

This is an excerpt from a lecture I gave at Oxford Brookes University called 'The Pursuits of Flight/A Fear of Falling'
- which you can see here.
The Man who fell from Space - by Jonathan Hagos
http://vimeo.com/21619868How high does the "space" shuttle orbit, again ?!?
