Our first man in space got there by a route most people can’t guess: Balloon.
Joe Kittinger recounted his adventures to the CBS Morning Show, how he leaped from a balloon at the edge of space for the Air Force, to prove that humans could survive a fall from such distances, in the event of an emergency that required an astronaut to bail out.
Kittinger bailed out of the balloon at over 102,000 feet, nearly three times the height of Mt. Everest into the atmosphere.
But Elton John never wrote a song about “Balloon Man.”
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 