Move over Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones, take a back seat, Donald Sutherland and James Garner. There’s a new geriatric Space Cowboy in town and he’s flying solo.
The Ford Mustang, now age fifty, finally made it into space. Thanks to Ford sales manager Michael Sego and ford dealer Steve Kubitz, a 2015 Mustang was sent into space via a balloon and some cameras for the first-ever documented space cruise by a Mustang.
“We wanted to celebrate 50 years of Mustang and the impending arrival of the all-new 2015 Mustang by doing something really special,” said Sego. “Mustang has always been about getting behind the wheel and hitting the open road, but we decided to take to the open sky.”
Launching a Mustang on a rocket into space wasn’t practical for Sego and the Big Valley Ford team, so they took inspiration from Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner. In October 2012, Baumgartner used a custom helium-filled balloon to ride a capsule up to nearly 128,000 feet above the earth before diving back to earth.
Sego and Kubitz acquired a high-altitude weather balloon, and added a rod to the side instrumentation box suspended below it. The team mounted one of the Revell Mustang model kits that were distributed at auto shows earlier this year on the rod, along with a pair of small action cameras to record the event.
Plus they got it on video for the Interwebs. Perfect. Watch as the Mustang flies 21 miles up and out of the atmosphere.
http://youtu.be/OpnoOmQwyP0
