Daredevil Jumps, and Lands on His Feet

Daredevil Jumps, and Lands on His Feet
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: October 14, 2012

ROSWELL, N.M. — Felix Baumgartner, the professional daredevil, jumped from a balloon more than 24 miles above the Earth on Sunday, and landed safely on his feet.

Just minutes earlier, Mr. Baumgartner stood on the edge of his capsule completing a final checklist before jumping into a near vacuum at above 127,000 feet, or more than 24 miles. He landed in the eastern New Mexico desert, and lifted his arms in victory. His support team and family cheered.

Mr. Baumgartner took 2 hours 21 minutes to reach the height, lifting off in an enormous helium balloon that smoothly carried him through the critical first 4,000 feet — called the Dead Zone because it would be impossible to parachute to safety.

From the distance above the New Mexico desert — he had hoped to make the highest jump in history and become the first sky diver to break the speed of sound. Before the jump, Mr. Baumgartner went through a checklist with help from Joe Kittinger, 84, the retired Air Force colonel who in 1960 jumped from 102,800 feet, setting records that remained more than half a century later — and that Mr. Baumgartner was hoping to break.

During the second hour of ascent, Mr. Baumgartner complained to Mr. Kittinger that the heating system in his visor was not working properly, and the visor was fogging up. At that point viewers following the live feed of the mission stopped hearing the men’s conversation. The Red Bull Stratos team said that Mr. Kittinger had decided to "enable private conversation."

He again complained about fog in his visor during his jump, but it did not seem to impede his ability to gain control during his fall.

The mission required the largest balloon ever used for a manned flight. Made of 40 acres of ultrathin plastic, it had been described as an inflated dry-cleaning bag that would fill the Los Angeles Coliseum.

When inflated and attached to Mr. Baumgartner’s pressurized capsule, the balloon towered 750 feet above the ground. The winds at that level and at the ground had to be less than three miles an hour for it to be launched safely, so that there was no chance of the balloon lurching and smashing the capsule into the ground.

Mr. Baumgartner, wearing a pressurized suit to survive in the near vacuum at the edge of space, had hoped reach a speed of more than 700 miles an hour. Mr. Baumgartner was backed by a NASA-style mission control operation at an airfield in Roswell that involved 300 people, including more than 70 engineers, scientists and physicians who have been working for five years on the project, called Red Bull Stratos, after the drink company that has financed it.

Besides aiming at records, the engineers and scientists on the Red Bull Stratos team are gathering and publishing reams of data intended to help future pilots, astronauts and perhaps space tourists survive if they have to bail out.

“We’re testing new space suits, escape concepts, and treatment protocols for pressure loss at extreme altitudes,” said the Red Bull Stratos medical director, Dr. Jonathan Clark, who formerly oversaw the health of space shuttle crews at NASA. “There are so many things that could go wrong here that we’re pushing the technical envelope.”

While building the customized suit and capsule, the team of aerospace veterans had to contend with one crucial uncertainty: What happens to the human body when it breaks the sound barrier? There was also one major unexpected problem for Mr. Baumgartner, 43, an Austrian daredevil and former paratrooper known to his fans as Fearless Felix.

Although he had no trouble jumping off buildings and bridges, and across the English Channel in a carbon-fiber wing, he found himself suffering panic attacks when forced to spend hours inside the pressurized suit and helmet. At one point in 2010, rather than take an endurance test in it, he went to an airport and fled the United States. With the help of a sports psychologist and other specialists, he learned techniques for dealing with the claustrophobia.

One of the techniques Mr. Baumgartner developed for dealing with claustrophobia was to stay busy throughout the ascent. Mr. Baumgartner conversed steadily, in Austrian-accented English, with Mr. Kittinger, a former fighter pilot whose deep voice exuded the right stuff as he confidently went through a 40-item checklist rehearsing every move that Mr. Baumgartner would make when it came time to leave the capsule — tasks like sliding his seat forward, checking his parachutes, and carefully opening the hatch.



“Item 38. stand up on the exterior step but be sure to duck your head down low as you go out that door,” Mr. Kittinger said. After Mr. Baumgartner confirmed that and the next two steps, Mr. Kittinger said, "The rest is yours."

They finished that rehearsal one hour into the ascent, after the balloon had ascended safely through the jet stream and reached 60,000 feet. It was still visible from the ground by naked eye. Through binoculars, it was could be observed growing wider as the helium expanded in the thinning stratosphere.

Besides being his most complex challenge, the stratospheric jump is also the one most likely to be made into a buddy movie, thanks to the friendship that he developed with Mr. Kittinger, who helped train Mr. Baumgartner.

Mr. Kittinger, a former test pilot, set his records in a 1960 trip to the stratosphere. Early during that ascent, also over New Mexico, in an Air Force balloon, one of his pressurized gloves leaked, but he was so determined to keep going that he did not report the problem, even after his hand swelled to twice its normal size.

Ignoring the pain, he rode the balloon up to 102,800 feet and said a short prayer — “Lord, take care of me now” — before stepping off. He reached a speed of 614 miles an hour and spent 4 minutes, 36 seconds in free fall. Those records were repeatedly challenged during the ensuing half century, sometimes with fatal consequences.

The original stratospheric jump by Mr. Kittinger was part of an Air Force program studying ways to help pilots survive high-altitude bailouts. It experimented with a small parachute, called a drogue, to prevent the jumper’s body from going into a flat spin — a hazard that almost killed Mr. Kittinger in a preliminary jump in 1959. When his drogue chute became entangled around his neck, his body spun at 120 revolutions a minute, causing him to blackout until his emergency parachute automatically deployed. An improved version of that drogue chute is now used by military pilots who have to bail out in the ejection-seats used by pilots.

Mr. Baumgartner was equipped with his own customized high-tech drogue chute but as a precaution — to be activated only if he began spinning out of control. Otherwise, he planned to avoid using it because the drogue chute would have slowed him down just enough to prevent him from going supersonic.

To avoid spinning out of control, Mr. Baumgartner practiced doing a bunny hop out of the capsule and controlling his body so that it rotated into headfirst position for the supersonic descent.

“We try to anticipate as much as we can about supersonic speed,” Dr. Clark said before the jump, “but we don’t really know, because nobody has done this before.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 14, 2012

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the inflation of the balloon. It started at 10:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, not standard time.

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Did anybody else see this? It was SO COOL to watch this guy up in space jump from this little pod- freefall for over 4 minutes (which would be so amazing to do!)- break the sound barrier- and start flipping through the air at least 40 times-then 24 miles later to watch him land on his FEET! It was a really awesome experience to watch this definitely

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Wow WATW - this is the most amazing feat! I love this! OK-so who is in line with me to (wishful thinking) do this too? lol I am in awe of the magnitude of this and the time and effort - the number of people involved - just the best!!

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I would so love to do this someday- even if it is wishful thinking lol

Yeah I heard about that guy doing something like this yesterday. Glad he made the jump! I'm terrified of heights so hats off to him! @WATW if you ever try to do something like this I'll be praying hard lol!