STRATOQUEST (Project)

StratoQuest is a World Record High Altitude Sky Dive Attempt and Research Project to be carried out by Cheryl Stearns, a renowned parachutist and pilot.
She will attempt to break the current world sky dive record of 102,800 feet by ballooning to 130,000 feet and safely parachuting in a pressurized space suit to the earth's surface.

The StratoQuest mission encompasses a variety of scientific, historical and athletic objectives. Among them is to obtain scientific data that could allow future escapes from vehicles outside the earth's atmosphere, control the rotation in a spacesuit during free-fall, perform different research tests related to the sound barrier and temperature, to obtain vital readings in the different phases of the fall, and to study the behaviour of different communication systems during the jump.

Other objectives are also to safely reach beyond the farthest perimeters of research and high altitude ballooning while maintaining pure athletic beauty of a skydive performance outside the earth's realm, achieve historical research, safety procedures, spacesuit aerial acrobatics during the world's highest record skydive at its finest form.

The jump, to be performed using an open aluminum gondola and a mylar balloon would be carried out from McConnell Air Force Base, in Wichita Kansas. By 2003 a preliminary schedule called for the jump to be performed in fall or spring 2005, but Cheryl Stearns as a reservist of the Army was called to active duty in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Also some budgetary constrains put the project in hold as the team continued to work on obtaining the approximately 7-8 million dollars required for the project.

Since 2008 the mission has no certain date and Stearns, while continued his very succesful career as skydiver put the project in hold while looking for sponsors.

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