That one time a man deliberately crashed at 632mph to pull max Gs

Col. Joseph Kittinger is ready to gooooooooo during Project Excelsior. (credit: National Museum of the US Air Force)

Aside from documentaries by Ken and Ric Burns, my favorite PBS program is American Experience, the invariably well done series that covers slices of US history. So when I heard the network planned to run an episode on "pre-astronauts," people who pushed into the edge of space and tested human physiology in extreme environments before NASA rose to prominence, I was eager to watch.

Space Men premieres Tuesday at 9pm ET on PBS. It chronicles Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior, two initiatives in which explorers rose as high as 102,800 feet in helium-filled balloons to experience the frigid cold and near zero atmospheric pressure of such altitudes. In some ways these missions set the stage for Project Mercury, which would come shortly after, and they're worth remembering for their own sake.

While I was familiar with Project Excelsior and the daring high altitude jumps made by Col. Joseph Kittinger, I admit I never heard the name John Paul Stapp, who entered the Army Air Corps as a physician in 1944. He really stands out in this episode as an out-of-his-time man who foresaw that one day humans would fly into space.

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