#3039: Human Altitude
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Height above Earth's surface of the highest-altitude human over time
(very approximate)
[A line graph is shown, with frequent spikes on the line. The y-axis is a logarithmic scale from 1 meter to 1,000,000 km. The x-axis shows years from about 1710 to 2025.]
[Label between 1720s and 1780s, maximum height is roughly 100 meters:]
Various falls and hilarious catapult accidents
[Label with multiple arrows, from 1780s to 1910s, maximum height is roughly 10 km:]
Balloon flights
[Label with multiple arrows, from 1910s to 1960s, maximum height increases to roughly 100 km:]
Airplane flights
[Label with arrow, in the late 1960s, maximum height is roughly 500 km:]
Spaceflight
[Label with arrow, in the 1970s, maximum height is roughly 500,000 km:]
Apollo Program
[Label between 1990s and 2025, the average height after 2000 is roughly 500 km:]
Space station
(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)
Title text:I wonder what surviving human held the record before balloons (excluding edge cases like jumping gaps on a mountain bridge). Probably it was someone falling from a cliff into snow or water, but maybe it involved something weird like a gunpowder explosion or volcano.