Original Space Dive

The first stratospheric space dive was in 1959 when Colonel Joseph William Kittinger II (born July 27, 1928 in Tampa, Florida, United States) a former command pilot, career military officer and retired Colonel in the United States Air Force dived from a high-altitude balloon. He participated in Project Excelsior, testing the effects on pilots of ejecting at high altitude and in 1960 set a record for the longest skydive, from a height greater than 102,000 feet (31 km).