Skydiver breaks sound barrier in record jump

Pilot Felix Baum­gart­ner of Aus­tria is seen in a screen at mis­sion con­trol cen­ter in the cap­sule dur­ing the final manned flight for Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, N.M. on Sun­day. Baum­gart­ner plans to jump from an alti­tude of 120,000 feet, an alti­tude cho­sen to enable him to achieve Mach 1 in free fall, which would deliver sci­en­tific data to the aero­space com­mu­nity about human sur­vival from high alti­tudes. (Cour­tesy | Red Bull Stratos, Ste­fan Aufschnaiter)

JUAN CARLOS LLORCA

Asso­ci­ated Press

ROSWELL, N.M. — In a giant leap from more than 24 miles up, a dare­devil sky­diver shat­tered the sound bar­rier Sun­day while mak­ing the high­est jump ever — a tum­bling, death-defying plunge from a bal­loon to a safe land­ing in the New Mex­ico desert.

Felix Baum­gart­ner hit Mach 1.24, or 833.9 mph, accord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary data, and became the first man to reach super­sonic speed with­out trav­el­ing in a jet or a space­craft after hop­ping out of a cap­sule that had reached an alti­tude of 128,100 feet above the Earth.

Land­ing on his feet in the desert, the man known as “Fear­less Felix” lifted his arms in vic­tory to the cheers of jubi­lant onlook­ers and friends.

“When I was stand­ing there on top of the world, you become so hum­ble, you do not think about break­ing records any­more, you do not think about gain­ing sci­en­tific data,” he said after the jump. “The only thing you want is to come back alive.”

A world­wide audi­ence watched live on the Inter­net via cam­eras mounted on his cap­sule as Baum­gart­ner, wear­ing a pres­sur­ized suit, stood in the door­way of his cap­sule, gave a thumbs-up and leapt into the stratosphere.

“Some­times we have to get really high to see how small we are,” an exu­ber­ant Baum­gart­ner told reporters out­side mis­sion con­trol after the jump.

Baumgartner’s descent lasted for just over nine min­utes, about half of it in a free fall of 119,846 feet, accord­ing to Brian Utley, a jump observer from the Inter­na­tional Fed­er­a­tion of Sports Avi­a­tion. He said the speed cal­cu­la­tions were pre­lim­i­nary figures.

Baum­gart­ner said trav­el­ing faster than sound is “hard to describe because you don’t feel it.”

With no ref­er­ence points, “you don’t know how fast you travel,” he said.

The 43-year-old for­mer Aus­trian para­trooper with more than 2,500 jumps behind him had taken off early Sun­day in a cap­sule car­ried by a 55-story ultra-thin helium balloon.

His ascent that was tense at times and included con­cerns about how well his facial shield was working.

Any con­tact with the cap­sule on his exit could have torn his suit, a rip that could expose him to a lack of oxy­gen and tem­per­a­tures as low as minus-70 degrees. That could have caused lethal bub­bles to form in his bod­ily fluids.

But none of that hap­pened. He acti­vated his para­chute as he neared Earth, gen­tly glid­ing into the desert east of Roswell and land­ing with­out any appar­ent dif­fi­culty. The images trig­gered another loud cheer from onlook­ers at mis­sion con­trol, among them his mother, Eva Baum­gart­ner, who was over­come with emo­tion, crying.

He then was taken by heli­copter to meet fel­low mem­bers of his team, whom he hugged in celebration.

Coin­ci­den­tally, Baumgartner’s feat came on the 65th anniver­sary of the day that U.S. test pilot Chuck Yea­ger became the first man to offi­cially break the sound bar­rier in a jet.

At Baumgartner’s insis­tence, some 30 cam­eras recorded his stunt Shortly after launch, screens at mis­sion con­trol showed the cap­sule as it began ris­ing high above the New Mex­ico desert, with cheers erupt­ing from orga­niz­ers. Baum­gart­ner could be seen on video, calmly check­ing instru­ments inside the capsule.

Baumgartner’s team included Joe Kit­tinger, who first tried to break the sound bar­rier from 19.5 miles up in 1960, reach­ing speeds of 614 mph. With Kit­tinger inside mis­sion con­trol, the two men could be heard going over tech­ni­cal details dur­ing the ascension.

“Our guardian angel will take care of you,” Kit­tinger radioed to Baum­gart­ner around the 100,000-foot mark.

An hour into the flight, Baum­gart­ner had ascended more than 63,000 feet and had gone through a trial run of the jump sequence. Bal­last was dropped to speed up the ascent.

Kit­tinger told him, “Every­thing is in the green. Doing great.”

As Baum­gart­ner ascended, so did the num­ber of view­ers watch­ing on YouTube. Nearly 7.3 mil­lion watched as he sat on the edge of the cap­sule moments before jumping.

After he landed, his spon­sor, Red Bull, posted a pic­ture of Baum­gart­ner on his knees on the ground to Face­book, gen­er­at­ing nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 com­ments and more than 29,000 shares in less than 40 minutes.

On Twit­ter, half the world­wide trend­ing top­ics had some­thing to do with the jump, push­ing past seven NFL foot­ball games. Among them was this tweet from NASA: “Con­grat­u­la­tions to Felix Baum­gart­ner and Red­Bull Stratos on record-breaking leap from the edge of space!”

This attempt marked the end of a five-year road for Baum­gart­ner, a record-setting high-altitude jumper. He already made two prepa­ra­tion jumps in the area, one from 15 miles high and another from 18 miles high. He has said that this was his final jump.

Baum­gart­ner has said he plans to set­tle down with his girl­friend and fly heli­copters on moun­tain res­cue and fire­fight­ing mis­sions in the U.S. and Austria.

Posted by AP News on Oct 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.