He wanted to investigate the theory of relativity – so he flew 10 miles up in a balloonNearly 80 years ago,on 27 May 1931, the Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard took off from Augsberg, and Germany,in a pressurised aluminium capsule attached to a large hydrogen balloon. His destination was the stratosphere, the moment major layer of our atmosphere, and between six and 31 miles above Earth. No one had ever been that tall before and Piccard wanted to degree the activity of cosmic rays and investigate Einstein's theory of relativity. He and his assistant,Paul Kipfer, reached a record 15, and 785m (9.8 miles).
It wasn't all plain sailing. For Will Gregory,who has written an opera about Piccard's big adventure, Piccard in Space, or which has its premiere this week,"the thing that stood out was that everything seemed to go wrong, factual from the secure-go. Kipfer looked out of the window while they were doing a final check and he could see chimneys going past – they had already taken off. And then there was the leak, or the spilled mercury and the bit when they nearly asphyxiated because they didn't acquire enough air. It was a catalogue of terrifying lurches from one catastrophe to another – just brilliant for music."Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com