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My recent conversation with uhoh reminded me of something which stays kind of unmentioned in history of air and space flight, namely the altitude record prior to Gagarin's Vostok 1 mission. I wonder what the highest human flight had been before the first spaceflight occured. There's a Wikipedia list on (airplane, helicopter and balloon) flight altitude records: Flight altitude record, which but is quite muddled up. From the list I conclude that Iven Kincheloe's Bell X-2 flight on Sept 7, 1956 was the altitude record until Vostok 1, Kincheloe having reached an altitude of ~126,300 ft (~ 38,5 km). Am I right and why does it remain so unmentioned, somehow? I mean like it was the highest flight until Vostok 1 and the highest airplane flight until the ones of the X-15.

  • @OrganicMarble Well, it's about the atmosphere kind of. Kincheloe's flight was into the upper stratosphere and close to the triple point of water, already beyond where liquid water could exist outside. –  Mar 26 '20 at 16:51
  • @user30007, Gagarin's flight was into space, everything else before was atmospheric, aviation.SE is likely to give better answers. – GdD Mar 26 '20 at 17:02
  • @GdD I don't want my account to be changed again. Please don't delete the question because everyone can see a possible answer (Kincheloe with Bell X-2 at about 126,000 ft). –  Mar 26 '20 at 18:11
  • Why would your account change @user30007? You just go to Aviation.SE and join it. – GdD Mar 26 '20 at 18:13
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because aviation altitude records are not related to space exploration. I suggest you ask on aviation stack exchange after searching that site for pertinent questions that have already been asked and determining that it's on-topic there. – Organic Marble Mar 26 '20 at 19:06
  • @OrganicMarble And note that it's also beyond the Armstrong limit where one needs a pressurized suit to survive outside. Stratosphere jumpers like Baumgartner or Eustace wore spacesuit-like suits. –  Mar 26 '20 at 19:27
  • @user30007 you can always [edit] your question to show it's relevance to space exploration. Right now I don't see it. Wiley Post wore a pressure suit too, that doesn't make it space related. – Organic Marble Mar 26 '20 at 20:41
  • I changed tags because it's not specially about military and instead on high atmospheric flight. The Bell X-2 was a rocket-powered aircraft, not a jet aircraft, so it didn't rely that much on the atmosphere. This is what must have allowed the craft to rise so high. I'd say that as long as we talk about rocket technology it's alright to be in space.SE. –  Mar 27 '20 at 06:20
  • Looks like X-2 was the last American X-plane that carried a pilot and aimed at high altitude until X-15. Which predated Gagarin's flight by a couple years... – Zeiss Ikon Mar 27 '20 at 15:53

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Joe Walker flew X-15 #2 to 169,600 ft (51.7 km) on 1961-03-30, thirteen days before Vostok-1.

Source: X-15 flight log

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