"I could see the curvature of the earth below, stretching away to the south, featureless, the way a map looks. There was no sound except a faint whistling of the air outside the cabin. It was real detached up there, I can tell you. You sort of wondered if you still had any contact with the earth."
The speaker was no TV space cadet,* but a real-life space pioneer, Test Pilot William Bridgeman, 41, describing how it felt to whish 15 miles above the earth at nearly twice the speed of sound (TIME, July 28, 1952). He was the star of Flight...
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