On August 15th 1960, Joe Kittinger went up in a balloon, and kept going up. This is the story of an incredible journey, but beyond that is the biography of man's unfolding relationship with the sky. When Joe Kittinger finally came to a halt, he found himself in a paradoxical world of preternatural colour where the sun blazed from a sky as black as pitch. A few minutes on the very border of space were enough to persuade him to throw himself from his open gondola with relish. This is the tale of the fulfillment of one of our most ancient dreams - to escape the confines of earth and find out exactly what lies beyond the beautiful blue dome of the sky. In the process, it overthrows the universal myth, enshrined in the West in the legends of Icarus and the Tower of Babel, that the realm above the clouds is strictly for the gods.