File:Explorer II gondola - Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - 2012-05-15 (7271389346).jpg
.jpg){kind=small}
Original file (1,500 × 1,420 pixels, file size: 757 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
 | This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. Information from its description page there is shown below. Commons is a freely licensed media file repository. You can help. |
Summary
| Description |
The gondola of the Explorer II, a balloon co-sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the U.S. Army Air Corps, on display in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The goal was to build a balloon of reaching the stratosphere (6 to 30 miles above the surface of the Earth). The first balloon, Explorer, lifted off on July 28, 1934. On board were Captain Albert Stevens, Captain Orvil Anderson, and Major William E. Kepner. The balloon ruptured after seven hours of flight. It disintegrated, and the gondola went into free-fall. The remaining hydrogen in the balloon exploded at 5,000 feet. Stevens and Anderson bailed out. Kepner, too, bailed -- but only a mere 500 feet above the earth. All three survived. Explorer missed a world altitude record by 624 feet. It turns out that small folds in the balloon had stressed it, causing the tears. A second balloon, Explorer II, used helium rather than hydrogen. More than 20,000 people watched as it lifted off in November 11, 1935. Explorer II set a world altitude record of 72,395 feet. Anderson, Kepner, and Stevens were the first men to see the curvature of the Earth. |
| Date | |
| Source | Explorer II gondola - Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - 2012-05-15 |
| Author | Tim Evanson from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA |
Licensing
- You are free:
- to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to remix – to adapt the work
- Under the following conditions:
- attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
|
This image was originally posted to Flickr by Tim Evanson at https://flickr.com/photos/23165290@N00/7271389346 (archive). It was reviewed on 11 February 2018 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0. |
File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| current | 07:27, 11 February 2018 | | 1,500 × 1,420 (757 KB) | Donald Trung | Transferred from Flickr via Flickr2Commons |
File usage
The following page uses this file:
.jpg){kind=link}