Special to the American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, May 15, 2001 -- In 11 months, Army Reserve Sgt.
1st Class Cheryl Stearns hopes to be in a 365-foot
polyester balloon on the edge of space 24 miles up and
looking down on earth.
If all goes as planned, she'll jump from an open gondola at
130,000 feet and begin a freefall descent that would make
her the first human to reach a speed of more than 800 mph
and first woman to break the sound barrier without a
vehicle. She would shatter the current world record, a
transsonic freefall from 102,800 feet set by Air Force
Capt. Joe Kittinger Jr. on Aug. 16, 1960.
"It's another challenge. It's another impossible, but
possible goal," Stearns said. Stratoquest, as the project
is called, will add yet another record to the already long
list of aerial accomplishments that Stearns has to her
name. "It's the unknown again. No one really knows what it
will be like."
Stearns' journeys into the blue began 28 years ago in the
arid skies above Arizona when she was 17. She begged her
mother for the money to jump from an airplane, but what
should have been one jump turned to several, and several
turned to hundreds and then thousands.
"I always wanted to jump. I always wanted to know what a
120 mph freefall was like," Stearns said. "It was a problem
getting my parents to sign the permission slip. My mother
finally signed the slip and she gave me the 40 bucks to
make my first jump.
"I was just going to make the one jump, but you had to do a
static line before you could freefall, so you had to wait
until 20 jumps to make your 30-second delay jump. And I
said, 'When I get to that point, then I'll quit.'"
Stearns never quit after her first freefall. While
ascending to altitude during her initial parachute
training, she developed a curiosity for aircraft. She told
her father she wanted to learn to fly. Thinking it would
stop her from jumping out of airplanes, Stearns' father
paid for her flight school. He was wrong. She rarely spends
too much time on the ground, and she has soared into the
record books as the most decorated skydiver in the world.
Stearns is the current and 21-time U.S. women's skydiving
champion. She has 30 world records and for a time held four
different world records at once, a feat no other
parachutist has ever matched. She has a dizzying 14,000
jumps to her credit and in 1995 she jumped into Guinness
World Records, marking her page in history by logging the
most parachute jumps in 24 hours -- a staggering 352 jumps.
vAs a citizen soldier, Stearns is attached to the U.S. Army
Parachute Team, the Golden Knights, at Fort Bragg, N.C.,
where she serves in the Army Reserve as a supply sergeant.
She was the first woman to earn a spot on the Golden
Knights team, in 1977.
"I didn't want to be on the team just because I was a
woman," Stearns said. "I wanted to be on the team and be
recognized as the best person on the team. I was beating
everyone out there. I was beating all the men out there in
the world and that's what I wanted my position to be based
on."
Stearns' infectious competitive spirit quickly spread
throughout the team once she joined them. Her desire to be
the best made the team more cohesive.
"They weren't battling against me. It made us all pull
together," she said of her teammates. "I didn't have the
problems other women have faced when they're the first
female in a unit with harassment and things like that."
Stearns served two active duty hitches with the Golden
Knights in her continuing 24-year military career, but now
she serves part-time, juggling a demanding reserve military
career with an even more demanding professional civilian
life. She is a command pilot for US Airways with nearly
15,000 hours logged in 737s and one of the company's senior
pilots in the mid-Atlantic.
"It took me 13 years to get the top position as a pilot.
It's like making general," she said.
Stearns will train for eight months in preparation for the
Stratoquest jump. She flies about 700 hours per year and
jumps 600 to 700 times per year. She will don a pressurized
suit similar to what astronauts wear on space walks to
protect her from temperatures that can reach minus 90
degrees. She will have life support systems and a helmet
with a heads-up-display showing altitude, Global
Positioning System readings and her orientation to the
earth.
The Stratoquest jump is not just about breaking records.
Researchers will gather scientific data about astronaut
egress systems for future space vehicles. They will also
study the effects of transonic acceleration on the human
body in addition to a multitude of other space-related
experiments.
Stearns' international team of researchers, aviation and
parachuting experts and sponsors and supporters has already
started work to get the project off the ground and
completed their first phase of training in Austin, Texas.
"The biggest thing that I'm looking forward to is sitting
in that open gondola, with the doors open and watching the
earth go away," Stearns said with anticipation in her
voice. Although the jump is nearly one year away, she acts
as if she is jumping in a few minutes. "Can you see
yourself 24 miles high and riding up?"
(First Lt. Steven J. Alvarez is assigned to the Public
Affairs and Liaison Directorate in the Office of the Chief,
Army Reserve, Washington, D.C.) Photos - U.S. Army
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