RIP -Joe Kittinger
 

A giant of American aerospace history, Air Force Col. Joseph Kittinger Jr., who for more than half a century held a world record for a parachute jump from the edge of space, died in Florida on Friday at age 94.

In his record-setting jump in 1960, he stepped out of a gondola 102,800 feet (almost 20 miles) high, an elevation that put him outside more than 99 percent of Earth’s atmosphere. Then-Capt. Kittinger free-fell for four minutes 37 seconds, reaching speeds over 600 mph...

In 1984, he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in a helium balloon, from Maine, to the Italian Riviera.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...hute-obituary/

I met Joe in ~1985 when I lived in Augsburg, Germany. He came through town to give a presentation to the Augsburg Balloon Club, the largest in Europe, about his solo transatlantic balloon trip. The president of the club, the architect on a large hospital construction project I managed, asked me to serve as interpreter for his English language presentation to the German audience. After the presentation, we drank a bunch of beers together as he reminisced about his career.

RIP Joe.

Very sad indeed............