The Boiling Point

Britain claimed a new jet altitude record last week: 63,668 ft. over southwest England. The plane was a Canberra bomber with two Bristol Olympus turbojet engines, piloted by R.A.F. Wing Commander Walter F. Gibb.

Rocket planes have flown higher; the Douglas Skyrocket piloted by Bill Bridgeman reached 79,494 ft. in 1951 (TIME, Sept. 10, 1951). But since rocket motors need no air to breathe, they are considered in a separate class. They can fly under full power for only two or three minutes, and when trying for an altitude record, they must be dropped from the belly of a high-flying bomber. Wing Commander Gibb's Canberra took off from the ground in the normal way and stayed in the air for 61 minutes. At the top of its flight, its engines were breathing air only one-thirteenth as dense as air at sea level.

The 63,000-ft. level is a rather gruesome landmark in high-altitude flying. It is the level at which the air has so little pressure that human blood (temperature 98.6DEG F.) begins to boil. If something had gone wrong and Wing Commander Gibb had been exposed to the pressure outside his cockpit,' his veins and tissues would have puffed up with a froth of water vapor, his spinal fluid would have begun to beil, and he would have died in a few seconds.

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