In August 1960, Gator Joe Kittinger stepped into the emptiness 19 miles above New Mexico. His four minute, 36 second freefall teased the speed of sound, astounded the world ­– and paved the way for space missions that would follow.

by David Finnerty

For a moment … a twinkle in time … the world paused on July 20, 1969. A billion people stopped squabbling and stirring long enough to sit beside radios or squeeze around TVs to witness what had never been. That summer night, astronaut Neil Armstrong opened the hatch on NASA’s Eagle lunar modular, climbed down a ladder and stepped onto the moon.

As a mesmerized audience 238,855 miles away watched and listened, Armstrong declared: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Except, not exactly.

The real giant leap, the unthinkable small step that led to Armstrong’s boot print in moon dust, was years earlier.

And it was a Gator who did it.

Three times.

Kittinger’s record-setting leap from 19 miles above the desert in August 1960 was so incredible it made the cover of Life magazine.

In August 1960 — his third trip into the stratosphere in a gondola strapped to a helium balloon, a prelude to space exploration — UF alumnus Joe Kittinger stepped into the emptiness 19 miles above New Mexico. His four minute, 36 second freefall teased the speed of sound, clocking in at 614 mph. Three miles over the desert, his right hand swollen to twice its normal size because of a malfunction in his pressurized glove, Kittinger opened the parachute.

The feat was so remarkable Life magazine put it on the cover of its Aug. 29, 1960, issue. In the photo, Kittinger looks like a small green spot tumbling into an ocean of clouds. Fifty-two years would pass before the record 102,800-foot jump would be broken; Kittinger’s time in freefall, however, is still the longest ever.

“There is a hostile sky above me,” Kittinger said over the radio moments before that 1960 jump. “Man will never conquer space. He may live in it, but he will never conquer it. The sky above is void and very black and very hostile.”

So daring were Kittinger’s high-altitude jumps — 76,400 feet in November 1959, 74,700 a month later and finally 102,800 — Alan Shepard, the first American in space, insisted he wouldn’t have done them. “Hell, no,” he once said. “Absolutely not.”

Kittinger, who retired as an Air Force colonial, is one of the nation’s most decorated pilots in the history of aviation. He was twice awarded the military’s Silver Star and six times the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Shepherd wasn’t alone. The tests were too risky. On one, a faulty valve cost Kittinger his oxygen supply. On another, his faceplate fogged and a strap wrapped around his neck, causing him to spin so violently he passed out in freefall. And, of course, there was the problem with the pressurized glove.

After surviving his last jump, he wrote: “I am on the ground, apparently in one piece. I am surrounded by sand, salt grass and sage, but no Garden of Eden could look more beautiful.”

Kittinger, who died this December at the age of 94, was never as celebrated as the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts. But if not for his leaps from the edge of the heavens, NASA engineers might not have been able to design the spacesuits worn into orbit or other equipment used in spaceflights.

“We knew damned little at that time,” original Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton explained to historians. “That was an ambitious thing he did, and it was a valuable thing for the space program because when we got into Gemini, we had ejection seats for the first time and a lot of information Joe gathered went right into the design. He also tested the prototypes of the pressure suits we wore.”

A Gator Touches the Stars

Kittinger, a retired Air Force colonel, seemed meant to sail above the clouds. “The sky is my office,” he once told a reporter.

For most of his life, it was. And with a view far better than that of the plushest corner office in the tallest Manhattan skyscraper. Kittinger was the first person in history to observe the curvature of the Earth. On those high-altitude missions, he could almost touch the stars.

“Overhead it was black, absolutely black,” he said. “[Below] I could see almost 400 miles.”

The pressurized suit, combined with a parachute and other gear strapped to him on his record-setting freefall, doubled Kittinger’s weight to 320 pounds.

Even as a kid in Jacksonville, Kittinger looked to the skies. He soloed a Piper Cub while in high school. Soon after earning his UF engineering degree, he earned Air Force pilot wings.

And when the opportunity came to join an Air Force test program that would, in time, help send astronauts to the moon, Kittinger jumped — literally. In 1957, he piloted a balloon to a then-record 96,760 feet. Two years later, he made the first of three high-altitude leaps.

“There’s no way you can visualize the speed,” he said in 2011 of the jumps. “You have no depth perception. If you’re in a car driving down the road and you close your eyes, you have no idea what your speed is. It’s the same thing if you’re freefalling from space … I could only hear myself breathing in the helmet.”

A decade later, on his 483rd combat mission in Vietnam, Kittinger’s jet was shot down. He spent the next 11 months as a POW in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”

Nevertheless, the skies kept calling.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1978, Kittinger became the first to solo a balloon across the Atlantic Ocean.

His death sent a ripple through the Gator Nation.

“Joe Kittinger was one of the great heroes of 20th century aviation and space exploration,” said Harvey Oyer (BA ‘90, JD ‘98), a West Palm Beach attorney whose father attended UF with Kittinger in the late 1940s. “I was privileged to get to know Joe as a fellow member of the Explorers Club, which he was an active member of until his death. I consider him one of the most significant alums in UF history.”