Film Screening: Space Men (2016)

In the late 1940s, the notion of space travel lived squarely in the realm of science fiction. But a young Army doctor named John Paul Stapp saw no limit to how far mankind could go, he had his eyes set on the heavens. By the 1950s and early '60s, a small band of high-altitude pioneers exposed themselves to the extreme forces of space, long before NASA's acclaimed Mercury 7 would make headlines. With a fraction of NASA’s budget and none of its renown, Stapp's Project Excelsior would send Captain Joseph Kittinger to a record-breaking 102,800 feet above Earth, lifted not by rocket, but by balloon.