--- title: Joe Kittinger: The Man Who Fell to Earth | Leap From the Edge of Space description: On August 16, 1960, 32-year-old U.S. Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger ascended in a helium-balloon-tethered gondola to 102,800 feet (roughly 19 miles) above the Earth... canonical: https://time.com/3874416/joe-kittinger-the-man-who-fell-to-earth/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-10-01T16:15:42.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:55.085Z og:title: Joe Kittinger: The Man Who Fell to Earth | Leap From the Edge of Space og:description: On August 16, 1960, 32-year-old U.S. Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger ascended in a helium-balloon-tethered gondola to 102,800 feet (roughly 19 miles) above the Earth... og:url: https://time.com/3874416/joe-kittinger-the-man-who-fell-to-earth/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbeba00fba29a332/69884861e53aba36e64dcdaf/joe_kittinger_life_cover_crop.jpg?branch=production&width=725&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 725 og:image:height: 408 og:image:alt: Joe Kittinger LIFE Magazine cover 1960 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Joe Kittinger: The Man Who Fell to Earth | Leap From the Edge of Space twitter:description: On August 16, 1960, 32-year-old U.S. Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger ascended in a helium-balloon-tethered gondola to 102,800 feet (roughly 19 miles) above the Earth... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbeba00fba29a332/69884861e53aba36e64dcdaf/joe_kittinger_life_cover_crop.jpg?branch=production&width=725&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Joe Kittinger: The Man Who Fell to Earth > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Worth Your Time: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Worth Your Time is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more. Worth Your Time is a curated guide to the culture worth knowing, from the biggest conversations of the moment to the books, shows, ideas and discoveries worth your attention. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 1, 2012 4:15 PM UTC  LIFE 8-29-1960 Cover of Air Force Capt. Joseph Kittinger in a four-minute free fall from height of nineteen miles; cr: US Air Force. LIFE 8-29-1960 Cover of Air Force Capt. Joseph Kittinger in a four-minute free fall from height of nineteen miles; cr: US Air Force. LIFE MAGAZINE, COPYRIGHT TIME IN by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 1, 2012 4:15 PM UTC On August 16, 1960, 32-year-old U.S. Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger ascended in a helium-balloon-tethered gondola to 102,800 feet (roughly 19 miles) above the Earth … and jumped. His free-fall lasted 4 minutes and 36 seconds. He experienced temperatures approaching minus-100 degrees Fahrenheit. As he fell, Kittinger neared the speed of sound, his pressure-suit-encased body traveling at more than 600 mph before he opened his parachute at around 14,000 feet. To this day, incredibly, he _still_ holds records for highest parachute jump and longest-ever free-fall. Captain Kittinger’s adventure was chronicled, at the time, in the pages of LIFE. But it was the image that graced the cover of the August 29, 1960, issue of the magazine—of a green-clad Kittinger tumbling through the ether above a clean, white blanket of clouds—that immediately and forever brought home the sheer audacity of his leapfrom the edge of space. Today, as the Austrian daredevil [Felix Baumgartner](http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/10/08/felix-baumgartners-23-mile-freefall-attempt-by-the-numbers/) readies himself to try (weather permitting) to break not only Kittinger’s five-decade-old records for highest jump and longest free-fall, but perhaps even the sound barrier itself _with his own body_, it’s striking to look back and realize just how powerful a single, still photograph can be, and how many emotions it can stir, so many years after the event. For Kittinger himself, the memory of his jump, and of his appearance on the cover of LIFE, remains startlingly fresh. “I was eight years old when LIFE magazine was first published,” Col. Kittinger (Ret. USAF), now 84 years old, told LIFE.com. “I remember, so clearly, that my folks received a copy of LIFE every week. I religiously thumbed through every issue, keeping up with happenings all around the world. The photos were always so remarkable. But I could never have dreamed that one day, _I_ would be on the cover. What an honor that was! To this day, I still get requests from people around the globe, asking for my autograph on that very cover.” The Aaron Paul car-crash thriller took a back seat to the DreamWorks cartoon But beyond Kittinger’s recollections, there is the sense of wonder that anyone with even a modicum of imagination can embrace, looking at that picture of a human form hurtling toward the planet’s cloud cover miles below. The one image, snapped by an automatic camera perched in the gondola out of which Kittinger had just stepped, captures so many aspects of human endeavor that it bears repeat viewings. One might even say, repeat encounters. The jump, after all, undertaken in the name of science, is an emblem of our pursuit of knowledge—not as something dry and purely academic, but as adrenalized thrill-ride. (Kittinger, by the way, is a consultant on the Baumgartner jump.) It’s also a snapshot of a life at the moment of supreme fulfillment. Joseph Kittinger dreamed of flying ever since he was a young boy in Florida. That he was the one human in a position to make that leap—and that he _wanted_ to make the leap—speaks to a confidence and a faith in one’s team (scientists, engineers, fellow pilots) that verges on the awesome. Most of us have trouble falling back into the arms of friends and colleagues during “trust exercises” here on the ground; Kittinger’s trust was absolute and unwavering. His life, literally, depended on that trust being warranted. And it was. Finally, and simply, the image on the cover of LIFE is just a breathtaking picture. One thinks, inevitably, of Icarus’ fall through an ancient sky—while celebrating Kittinger’s far happier fate. That a man had the strength of will to step from that gondola, so many miles above the Earth, with a hope, but absolutely no promise, of having it all end well suggests that as a species we’re perhaps braver than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. Or some of us are, anyway. And as long as some of us are, then the sky is no limit. _— Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com_  August 16, 1960: U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger leaps from a gondola 102,800 feet (roughly 19 miles) above the Earth. LIFE magazine 1960 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3874416/joe-kittinger-the-man-who-fell-to-earth/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3874416/joe-kittinger-the-man-who-fell-to-earth/"},"headline":"Joe Kittinger: The Man Who Fell to Earth","datePublished":"2012-10-01T16:15:42.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:55.085Z","description":"On August 16, 1960, 32-year-old U.S. Air Force Capt. 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