We Have Not Yet Begun to Tell You to Read William Langewiesche
But we’ve done it enough that we don’t need to spellcheck “Langewiesche,” if that means anything? Anyway, the extremely handsome and talented Langewiesche has a fantastic new thing in Vanity Fair about Felix Baumgartner, which is terrifying and incredible:
The cabin depressurized quickly, passing through the so-called Armstrong limit — the altitude around 63,000 feet, where fluids in the human body begin to “boil” or vaporize at a normal body temperature. The Armstrong limit is named for the air-force doctor who identified the phenomenon in the 1940s. The effects of such vaporization are grotesque and deadly. Years ago, during a series of altitude-chamber experiments with guinea pigs, during which the animals puffed up to twice their normal size as they died, the air force forbade its researchers to film the tests out of concern that the images would find their way into public awareness. During a series of high-altitude test flights in the 1960s, air-force pilots wearing pressure suits flew parabolic arcs in unpressurized F-104 fighters to altitudes above 80,000 feet. On one of those flights the glove of a test pilot came off, causing his suit to deflate. He had time only to radio, “My glove came off” and “Good-bye” before he lost consciousness and died.
Baumgartner is alive and well and drinking Red Bull, it’s important to remember.