Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner fell a whopping 24 miles to Earth yesterday, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier under his own power. He now holds the record for the highest jump ever accomplished by man, which took him just over four minutes to accomplish.
After riding a stratospheric helium balloon to an altitude of 120,000 feet (a commercial jet generally flies at 30,000 feet), he reached a maximum speed of 833.9 miles per hour (the speed of sound is 761.2 mph) during his free fall. After landing safely in the New Mexico desert, Baumgartner said, “I wish the world could see what I see. Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are.”
His jump broke the record set in 1960 by Joe Kittinger, a former Air Force colonel who advised Baumgartner throughout preparations for yesterday’s event. Previous attempts to break Kittinger’s record have resulted in death. When asked about his own record, Kittinger said, “Better champions cannot be found than Felix Baumgartner.”
Baumgartner’s jump – a project called Red Bull Stratos – took five years to orchestrate, and involved a team of over 300 people, including over 70 engineers, scientists, and physicians. This was the first successful jump in what Stratos calls a “near-space environment:” while we live in the first layer of the earth’s atmosphere, the troposphere, Baumgartner jumped from the next layer – the stratosphere. This involved a remarkable number of engineering and technological developments, from developing Baumgartner’s space suit, to the capsule he rode in and the balloon that took him through the atmosphere.
Ultimately, though, the most important thing wasn’t breaking records or making advances in science, but coming back to Earth, said Baumgartner. “Trust me, when you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It’s not about breaking records any more. It’s not about getting scientific data. It’s all about coming home.”Â
Photo source:Â
The New York Times