"At an altitude of ten miles, the Earth is a marvelous sight. Yet it is terrifying, too. As we rose the Earth seemed at times like a huge disk, with an upturned edge, rather than the globe that it really is. The bluish mist of the atmosphere grew red-tinged, and the Earth seemed to go into a copper-colored cloud. Then it all but disappeared in a haze." -- Auguste Piccard, Literary Digest, Jan. 28, 1933

"Piccard gives us to understand that the journey [in the stratosphere] will be both speedy and placid, accomplished in flawless sunshine and remote from the storms and tempests that prevail nearer to the earth. No wonder that the very word 'stratosphere' has a pleasant sound!" -- Dorothy Fisk, Exploring the Upper Atmosphere, Oxford Univ. Press, 1934