Records
The altitude record for a manned balloon flight was set at 39.045 kilometers on October 14, 2012 by Felix Baumgartner breaking a record of 34.7 kilometers on May 4, 1961 by Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather in a balloon launched from the deck of the USS Antietam in the Gulf of Mexico.
The altitude record for an unmanned balloon is 53.0 kilometers. It was reached by a Fujikura balloon with a volume of 60 thousand cubic metres, launched in May 2002 from Sanriku, Iwate, Japan. This is the greatest height ever obtained by an atmospheric vehicle. Only rockets, rocket planes, and ballistic projectiles have flown higher.
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Famous quotes containing the word records:
“Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men’s eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what’s gone.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“My confessions are shameless. I confess, but do not repent. The fact is, my confessions are prompted, not by ethical motives, but intellectual. The confessions are to me the interesting records of a self-investigator.”
—W.N.P. Barbellion (1889–1919)
“The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)