Will This Man Break The Sound Barrier Today?

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If the weather over Roswell, New Mexico, cooperates this week, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner will ride a heliumballoon to 120,000 feet above Earth, then jump from the confines of his cramped Red Bull Stratos gondolacapsule. Within 40 seconds in the near-vacuum of the stratosphere, his bodywill accelerate to more than 690 mph, faster than sound. After five and a half minutes offree fall (and after “slowing” to 170 mph by friction in the lowertroposphere), his chute will deploy, at 5,000 feet, and he will peacefully coast theremaining mile to Earth. At least that’s the plan. IfBaumgartner, 43, can pull it off, he will break Col. Joseph Kittinger’s parachuterecord of 102,800 feet, set in 1960 as part of a U.S. Air Force program to determinewhether humans could survive bailout from aircraft at extreme altitudes. He will alsobecome the first person to break the sound barrier without an aircraft.Baumgartner has trained extensively for this moment. In addition to past bold stunts --including a 1999 BASEjump from the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and a 2003 soloflight over the English Channel using a jet-powered wing -- he already has survived twohigh-altitude parachute jumps. Both were above the critical Armstrong line of 63,000 feet,where blood boils without a pressure suit. The first, from 71,581 feet, was completed inMarch. The second, in July, from 96,640 feet, ranks as the second highest jump ever. This year has been particularly good for the private sector in attempts to equalor break old exploration records set by the government. Red Bull, if successful withBaumgartner’s jump, is part of this large private movement. In March,Titanic director James Cameron equaled U.S. Navy Captain Don Walsh’s 1960dive to the deepest point on Earth, seven miles below sea level in the Mariana Trench.Then, in May, ElonMusk’s Space X challenged NASA and became the first private rocketeer to sendcargo to the International Space Station.Baumgartner isn’t the first totake a shot at Col. Kittinger's record. Over the past half-century, a handful ofindividuals have tried, all unsuccessfully. The most recent serious effort, in 2008, wasFrenchman Michael Fournier’s reported $20 million project in the Canadian provinceof Saskatchewan. Before Fournier could board his balloon, it malfunctioned and flew awaywithout him.As high as Baumgartner is going, he will not be jumping from outerspace, as some reports have suggested. Space is defined as 62 miles (about 327,000 feet)above sea level. Still, 120,000 feet is above 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere, makingthe view up there otherworldly, and the environment extremely dangerous. WhenI interviewed Col. Kittinger about his jump of 52 years ago, this is how he describedthe setting: “You can see about 400 miles in every direction. It’s just blackoverhead -- the transition from normal blue is very stark. I was struck with the beauty ofit. But I was also struck by how hostile it is: more than 100 degrees below zero, no air.If my protection suit failed, I would be dead in a few seconds.”Indeed.To get a feel for parachuting myself, a few years back I traveled to DeLand, Florida, formy own jump. None other than Col. Kittinger was my coach. The leap was a tandem affair --that is, I was strapped to a pro who pulled the chute when the critical time came -- andthe altitude was only 12,000 feet with a free-fall top speed of 120 mph. Still, it wasintense, and scary. Baumgartner will leap from 10 times my jump height, hitting speedsfive times what I did! Plus he’s alone if anything goes wrong. Is he nuts? Not really. I met Baumgartner when the Stratos project was in its early stages. Thoughoften called a “daredevil,” like many great adventurers, he seemed just theopposite: cautious, quiet and methodical. We discussed his leap from the Christ statue. Hesaid that the acceleration calculations and science were the easy part. He knew he coulddo the jump safely. The harder aspect was sneaking up to climb the statue at night withoutthe Brazilian police grabbing him. Continue Reading

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