The Giant Skyhook

A huge plastic high altitude balloon, the “Giant Skyhook”, intended to carry a load of 250 pounds to an altitude of nearly twenty‐three miles, was inflated early in September by personnel from the Office of Naval Research and the engineering research and development department of General Mills, Inc., but suffered damage in the process and its load of scientific instruments had to be cut away before it was launched. The balloon, even in its perforated state, managed to reach an estimated altitude of 35,000 feet before it was automatically dropped to earth two hours later some fifty miles from the launching site in Minnesota.