Man has always been driven by the urge to test his limits and break new records regardless of the consequences. The aspect led the Americans to pursue the desire of going into space. Also, they feared the competition from other super powers such as Germany and Russia, who were already undertaken experiments in space. In the early 19th century, projects dealing with space exploration began to spring up in America. They started out with NASA who formulated a team of seven men called the Mercury Seven. The seven individuals were called astronauts. They would be part of the journey into space to defy the odds that man could never make it beyond the earth’s atmosphere. This article entails a summary of the American experience in space.
The air force in the United States also developed an interest in space exploration. They conducted experiments using balloons. The air force would send men beyond the troposphere and each time they would increase the distance from the earth’s surface. The advancements of Starp, a member of the air force, accelerated the hopes of the Americans safely reaching greater heights into the stratosphere. He began by testing the speed limits that the human body could bear and clocked a remarkable level that earned him the title of the fastest man on earth (DocumentaryUS, American Experience).
After Starp tested his speed limits and broke several parts of his body, he earned a promotion that allowed him to further his dreams of space exploration. He sought to go back to the early form of space travel, that is, the use of the balloons. Starp looked for an organization that had been conducting experiments with the balloons, and together they procured an experiment called Project Man high that took man beyond 100000 feet from the earth’s surface. Their first test indicated the loopholes that the needed to fixed before conducting another examination (DocumentaryUS, American Experience). Project Man high encountered funding issues that almost struck down the American dream to go to space. But with the help of the balloon manufacturing firm, they realized the outcomes of their experiment to test whether a man could survive in the stratosphere.
Work Cited
DocumentaryUS. [Documentary] American Experience - Space Men (2016). Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWazPVfb4Fo>
