94 years old.
Kittinger stayed in the Air Force after his jumps, serving three tours of duty during the Vietnam War. He was shot down over North Vietnam in May 1972, but ejected and parachuted to Earth. He was captured and spent 11 months in a Hanoi prisoner of war camp, undergoing torture.
He retired from the Air Force in 1978 and settled in the Orlando area, where he became a local icon. A park is named there is named after him.
Free falling in the thin atmosphere, the Tampa native exceeded
600 mph (965 kph) before the gradually thickening air slowed his fall to about 150 mph (241 kph) when his parachute deployed at 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers).
“There’s no way you can visualize the speed,” Kittinger told Florida Trend magazine in 2011. “There’s nothing you can see to see how fast you’re going. 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 free falling from space. There are no signposts. You know you are going very fast, but you don’t feel it. You don’t have a 614-mph (988-kph) wind blowing on you. I could only hear myself breathing in the helmet.”
Pretty amazing stuff. Lived a long prosperous life. Best we can all do..
