This is an incredibly brave White American man whom few people know about. The jumps he did were extremely dangerous. The USAF did this deadly experiment in order to test whether they could come up with pressure suits and parachutes that would stop pilots from dying when ejecting from aircraft at a tremendous height. The data from this was extremely useful to NASA too. This record stood for 52 years. This was Joe's third jump. On a previous jump he went into a spin and became unconscious and nearly died. On this jump, his pressure suit leaked and he was in great pain. But he did not tell anyone. He was a Captain in the USAF when he did this. He continued his military career long after Project Excelsior, serving three combat tours as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War. He survived being shot down and spending 11 months as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton before eventually retiring from the Air Force in 1978 at the rank of Colonel. This is a genuine White American hero.