No one is forced to do anything in the Air Force.
Everyone volunteers.
How many dive -harses would you need to make before going up to Earth to the planet? I don't know exactly the number.
It will depend on the amount of hours we get in.
In other words, we need so many hours of indoctrination, so many landings.
16 hours, Colonel Simon says.
16 hours.
Yes.
Where will they be made from? From here.
Is that right? From here? Yes.
Probably below 10 ,000.
10 to 12 ,000.
10 to 12.
But not often when they're open ground.
I want to get underway.
You're not sweating it out at all.
Well, right now I'm sweating it out through the lights, but I'm not sweating if that's what you mean.
I don't think so.
Gentlemen speak of a hostile environment.
Where do you expect the biggest sweat to work during your 24 -hour instinct? After we reach ceiling altitude, the sweat really begins as I see it.
Any particular menaces to your health and well -being aside from radiation? There's always a chance of a decompression, an explosive decompression due to the capsule being punctured by one thing or another.
Or the areostat may burst, and I'll have to depend upon the parachute to get me down to a safe altitude, at which time I can either bail out or ride the capsule parachute down.
Or we could have a malfunction in the oxygen system, which would necessitate terminating the flight sooner than we plan.
Or just a minor mechanical dysfunction that go on in anything like this.
Do you expect any difficulty in getting through the jet stream that punctured two balloons last week? As I understand it, with this balloon, which is a thicker balloon, 1 .5 mil, we should have no trouble.
Colonel Simons and Captain Kittinger went through with the same type of balloon, so I've seen the reason why I couldn't, unless three is the unlucky number.
What do you imagine she is? Well, she's taking it at home, unfortunately.
Quite well.
My wife is a remarkable woman in many ways.
There's always a woman behind the man, and I'm fortunate enough to have someone who is...
Whatever I do is okay with her, and this is what it amounts to, really.
My three daughters are the ones that are raising the hell, as the story goes.
Captain Schock, what was the most unusual thing you noticed during your tests in the simulated flight? The most unusual thing was just sitting still for that length of time.
I mean, relatively still.
I like to think of myself as an active person, and I didn't know really whether I could sit still that long in one spot.
How long was it? I think we had around...
Thirty -four hours.
Captain, Colonel Simons took a lot of him a good luck piece from his family.
Are you superstitious, Matt? Anything like that going up with you? I'm not superstitious, although someone stole my silver dollar, which I've carried for a number of years.
Or I misplaced it, let's put it that way.
Orbiting, Captain.
If I were qualified, I think I would like to do it.
Are you qualified, Mr.
Simons? I don't know.
Am I qualified? That is one of the purposes of this whole program.
In fact, that's an aspect I should have pointed out.
We are in the process of working toward gaining the knowledge necessary to decide what qualifications are the ones that will best suit a man for this type of mission.
And it's so different from an air transmission that there are going to be later differences in qualifications.
This is becoming clear already.
Captain, didn't we have a report from University of Iowa scientists who were studying data from Explorer 4 that there was an almost impenetrable cosmic ray barrier? I remember back in 1903, someone said that the Wright Brothers' little plane would never fly very far either.
I don't know, maybe they were pessimistic.
Of course, they have more data than I.
I always like to think of what Hillary said when she was asked why he climbed Mount Everest.
It's there, and I'll climb it.
And I think the man is the same way about this.
I don't think that this is going to stop him and make him delay him a while, but I don't think it will really stop him.
The data from Explorer 4 about cosmic rays does not deter you or worry you then? No, because I have a good example to fall back on.
Every time I look at Colonel Simons, he doesn't look any grayer or any more decrepit than he did when I knew him a year ago.
And that sounds funny, but I don't mean it that way.
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