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With their companion Gaston Tissandier they set out
in their balloon the Zenith, determined to reach a height of
35,000 feet, the cruising altitude of a modern airliner. But each of
them had only a six-minute supply of oxygen for a flight that for two
hours would be above heights where oxygen was essential.
At 16,000 feet they checked their pulse and
respiratory rates, incompletely and inefficiently. All three were in an
unfit state to fly. Tissandier made notes which were illegible. Sivel's
breathing, like that of the others, was laboured. But he took more
oxygen and at once felt ecstatic. He eagerly asked his companions if
they should climb higher. They assented vaguely and the balloon soared
to 26,000 feet.
At this point all three dropped unconscious.
Tissandier awoke half an hour later to find the balloon was falling
rapidly. He threw out ballast to arrest the fall and then again
collapsed. The Zenith now rose again to their maximum height of
28,000 feet. Tissandier alone was briefly conscious. Then he was
insensible again for another hour and a half. When he awoke, the
balloon, now falling, was about to hit the ground. He had just enough
energy to throw out the anchor and achieve a soft landing. But his
companions were dead, their faces black and their mouths full of blood.
But for the lessons of this disastrous mission, many
more might later have perished when venturing into what was called at
the funeral "the dangerous deserts of space". Until that time,
people understood the physics but not the physiology of breathing in
very thin air. The flight of the Zenith taught not just that an
oxygen mixture was essential but that it was needed in copious amounts.
This discovery was as important as that of longitude
was to earlier explorers. Without the experiences of the ballooners we
might never have built aircraft and rockets. I welcome the reappearance
of this ancient and most useful technology.
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