When Hergé, the Belgian cartoonist, needed a model for his eccentric Professor Calculus in the Tintin cartoons, he didn't have to look far. His lanky, long-haired boffin is the spitting image of Auguste Piccard, a Swiss physicist working at the University of Brussels. And the cartoon's heroic voyages-with a nuclear-powered Moonrocket and shark submarine-bear an uncanny resemblance to Piccard's real-life adventures.
PICCARD wasn't particularly interested in fame or in breaking records. He wanted to find out what happened when cosmic rays from outer space hit the upper atmosphere. That meant going higher than any person had before.
Pilots in open cockpit planes had risked life and lungs by flying to 13 000 metres, but Piccard needed to go much higher. At such a height there wasn't enough oxygen to support either life or a combustion engine. So Piccard decided that he needed a hydrogen-filled balloon, to get round the engine ...
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