Joseph Kittinger: The First Man In Space?

sorry to burst your balloon, but no balloon can reach space. a
balloon requires the atmosphere to hold it up. that means the
atmosphere has to be denser than the air inside it. since even
hydrogen is not that much lighter than air, it has to to be either
extreamly large just to hold the weight of a man, or it has to be
lower, in fact, low enough that the air it displaces weighs more than
the entire weight of the balloon. since the definition of space is
outside of the atmosphere, no balloon has that capacity. he might
have reach space, if the balloon included an ejection capsule with a
long burn motor. i doubt it though.

--- In spacesettlers@...m, "Omar E. Vega"
>
> > Hello Gang,
> > So who was the first man in space?
> >
> > Alex Michael Bonnici
>
> Hi Alex,
>
> There were other high-altitude ballon expeditions a lot of times
> before Joseph Kittenger. Auguste Antoine Piccard (1884 1962)
reached
> 23 kilometers in the 30s. And he was the inventor of the
> presurized "space capsules".
>
> If any, he was the first "man in space". Now, In 1963, the X-15
marked
> an altitude record for an airplane at 67 miles (108 km) which is
> technically space. Now in 1947 the Bell X-1 reached 21 kilometers.
Now
> those records don't count as space travel expeditions.
>
> What Gagarin did was not only to get 3 times higher than the
balloners
> or at the same altitude than X-15 aircraft pilots that went later
up
> there. Gagarin entered orbit !!
> The condition to be considered a spatial travel is to get at least
to