In March 2006, U-2 pilot Kevin Henry started forgetting how to fly his own aircraft — five hours into a combat mission over Afghanistan, thirteen miles above the earth. This is the story of what it actually takes to survive at 70,000 feet. The U-2 “Dragon Lady” flies more than twice as high as a commercial airliner, in a pressure suit that costs a quarter of a million dollars, fed by tubes of pureed food, sealed for missions that now stretch past twelve hours alone in the cockpit. We break down the two-hour pre-breathing ritual that purges nitrogen from a pilot’s blood, the decompression sickness crisis that hit Air Force pilots between 2002-2009, the bizarre landing technique that requires a chase car doing 100+ mph down the runway, and the one piece of equipment that’s caused more complaints than anything else in the entire suit. This is the human cost behind one of the most demanding

Source: How U – 2 Pilots Eat, Sleep & Survive 12 Hours in a Pressure Suit at 70,000 Feet