Nicholas John Piantanida (August 15, 1932 – August 29, 1966) was an American amateur parachute jumper who reached 123,500 feet (37,600 meters; 23.39 miles)[1][2][3][4] with his Strato Jump II balloon on February 2, 1966, flying a crewed balloon higher than anyone before, a record that stood until Felix Baumgartner's flight on October 14, 2012.

When Piantanida was 10 years old, he experimented with homemade parachutes, harnessing a stray neighborhood cat to one in a test drop off the five-story apartment building where they lived.

[6] In 1963, Piantanida was living in Brick Township, New Jersey, and had a business selling pets when he discovered skydiving.

[1] As author Craig Ryan put it, he "transformed himself into the director of a one-man aeronautical research program.

On February 2, 1966, in his second attempt, Piantanida launched in Strato Jump II from Joe Foss Field near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and reached an unprecedented altitude of 123,500 feet (37,600 m).

Secured inside a styrofoam-insulated gondola about the size of a portable toilet,[5] he began his ascent for a planned super-sonic free fall from over 120,000 feet (37,000 m).

However, ground controllers listening to the communications link with the Strato Jump III were startled by the sound of a whoosh of rushing air and a sudden, cut-off call over the radio to abort.

The gondola of the Strato Jump III is preserved and displayed in the Boeing Aviation Hangar at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.