Abstract
A NOTABLE achievement falls to the credit of Capts. A. W. Stevens and Earl A. Anderson of the U.S. Army Air Corps, who, according to the reports in the daily Press, have successfully piloted their stratosphere balloon up to the record height of 74,000 feet. The previous record was held by the ill-fated Russian balloon Osoaviakhim which probably reached a height of 72,000 feet on January 30, 1934. After the first set-back of last July, when the top of Explorer II burst and released 375,000 cubic feet of helium, another occurred on Monday, November 11, when a 20-ft. rent in the envelope, produced during its inflation, had to be repaired at the last moment. The ascent was made at 7 a.m. from a point eleven miles west of Rapid City, and a safe landing was made in the evening at White Lake, South Dakota. Capt. Stevens reported by wireless that at his maximum height the external temperature was? 55° C, the cosmic ray intensity 150 times that at the earth's surface, and that the sky had become a jet black awning.
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American Stratosphere Balloon Explorer II. Nature 136, 786 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136786d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136786d0