On Sunday, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner broke the speed of sound during his record-setting jump from 128,000 feet over southeastern New Mexico. At one point he fell as fast as Mach 1.24, according to a team official. Baumgartner rose to a height of 24 miles in a capsule attached to a huge helium balloon and then jumped, breaking the record for the highest balloon ride and the highest jump.
The man was nicknamed “Fearless Felix” for setting numerous records with nothing but a space suit, a helmet, and a parachute. However, Baumgartner did not “break the record for time elapsed” before using the parachute, according to Mission Control.
Previously a soldier, Baumgartner had already had experience skydiving from landmarks such as the Petronas Tower in Malaysia and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. He had been preparing for this mission for five years.
Initially delayed for several hours due to unfit weather conditions, Baumgartner set off at 9:30 AM MT from Roswell, New Mexico. He rose toward the stratoshere during the next two hours. Baumgartner had been trained to maximize the falling speed by crouching into a “delta” position, and during his fall, he only reported one mishap three minutes into the fall: “My visor is fogging up.”
He fell freely from space for around four minutes and twenty seconds, then deployed a parachute to fall for the final one or two miles to the surface of the Earth.
Although he had prepared thoroughly for this seemingly formidable mission, his survival was not guaranteed due to the many dangers of skydiving from high altitudes. He had trained to avoid entering a dangerous “horizontal spin,” and his life depended on his pressure suit which would be affected by extreme temperatures, and also on the protection from the dangerously thin atmosphere.
One of the goals of the mission was to test the pressurized flight suit and helmet, since they could save an astronaut’s life if anything during a manned spaceflight went wrong.
Baumgartner’s successful fall broke the record set by Col. Joe Kittinger in 1960, who fell from 102,800 feet for a U.S. Air Force mission. Kittinger acted as Baumgartner’s consultant, constantly speaking to the skydiver throughout his jump.
With the successful completion of this incredible feat, humans may even be able to fly without the aid of a spacecraft in the future. We have yet to discover the limits of man.
