Martin wrote, By the way, does David Simons qualify as the first man in space?
I don't know who David Simons is but on 16 August 1960 Joe Kettinger got up to 102,800ft in a helium balloon over Texas. This is well above the earth's atmosphere, so we could argue that he was in space. When he jumped out of the gondola to descend, he fell for over 4 minutes before reaching the atmosphere and was travelling faster than the speed of sound when he got there. Even then he waited till 17,500ft before opening his parachute, and his total descent lasted 13 minutes 45 seconds. Yuri Gagarin went into orbit on 12 April 1961. Off topic - Sorry. Just thought it was interesting. Regards, John Hill =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
