Touching Space: The Story of Project Manhigh

Project Manhigh took humans to the threshold of space using balloons. In the 1950s, a small band of Air Force doctors were on the cutting edge of the United States' space research programs. Working at the Aeromedical Field Laboratory at Holloman Air Force Base in southern New Mexico, they used balloons to carry laboratory animals followed by human pilots above 99% of the atmosphere. Drawing upon flight reports and technical data, this book documents Project Manhigh and the high altitude flights that preceded it. The Manhigh flights were, in many ways, prototypes for future space missions. On each of the three flights, the Air Force placed a lone pilot in a sealed capsule nineteen miles above the ground. At such extreme altitudes, the pilots were well within the functional equivalent of outer space and needed the sealed capsule to survive. Manhigh existed prior to the creation of NASA and helped pave the way for human space exploration. NASA’s achievements during the 1960s were truly impressive, culminating with the first Americans on the moon in 1969, less than 11 years after the Manhigh III flight. However, during the time before NASA, the cutting edge in space biology could be found in a laboratory in southern New Mexico being conducted by a small band of Air Force scientists. In the era between World War II and the creation of NASA, the men who used balloons to venture to the edge of the atmosphere were the space program.