![]() ![]() The 42-year-old Austrian has made a living courting and defying death. The man’s name is Felix Baumgartner, and he’s not your average thrill-seeker. But it’s exactly how he safely completes the freefall that is the key reason for making the jump. Twenty minutes later – assuming he isn’t dead – the man will be back on Earth and in the record books. He will become the first person to go supersonic without the aid of a jet engine. At 120,000ft there will be no air resistance to slow him down, so he’ll tear through the sound barrier in less than half a minute. ![]() He’ll hurtle head-first through an environment that, without protection, would kill him in 14 seconds. A man will jump from a helium balloon halfway to the edge of space. Team is optimistic for earliest launch 8 am MDT," per a tweet just a little bit ago.Believe it or not, the mission is all about safety. ![]() "Winds at 13 knots at balloon top: 10 is max for launch. PT: The balloon ascent will begin no earlier than 7 a.m. PT: The balloon is being inflated, a process that takes about 1 hour, 15 minutes. PT: Baumgartner has passed the 100,000-foot mark in his ascent. Balloon is at just over 122,000 feet, nearing maximum altitude. PT: The decision has been made to jump, despite some trouble-shooting with the face mask. It remains to be determined whether he went supersonic or broke the speed record, but he was freefalling at more than 600 mph. His freefall time of 4 minutes, 22 seconds does not break the record for the longest freefall (4:36). PT: The Red Bull Stratos team says Baumgartner has broken the record for the highest manned balloon flight, having surpassed 113,740 feet on his way to roughly 128,000 feet, and that should also set the record for the highest freefall. PT: Added post-jump quote from Baumgartner. PT: Added adjusted top freefall speed of 1,342.8 km/h, or 834.4 mph. It was 65 year ago today that Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier, ever, doing so in the rocket-powered X-1 aircraft. The delay of the launch to today has helped deepen the historical resonance of the jump. Red Bull Stratos said the wind gust had "dangerously twisted" the balloon. Our biggest problem was the wind at the 750-foot level." "The integrity of the balloon at that point is really unknown and unacceptable to use for manned flight because we were not sure what would happen as we launch. , we experienced a gust of wind that took us above 22 knots at the peak of the balloon," Red Bull Stratos Project Director Art Thompson said in a statement. "As we inflated the balloon and got Felix into the capsule at about 11:42 a.m. The air needs to be virtually still during that phase of the operation. ![]() Tuesday's attempt was scrubbed when a wind gust hit 22 knots as the massive balloon - measuring 750 feet tall, including the capsule below, and stretching to 30 million cubic feet when filled - was being inflated on an airfield tarmac. Kittinger is now a prominent adviser to Baumgartner and Red Bull Stratos. (Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin wouldn't become the first person in space until eight months later.) In August 1960, Air Force officer Joe Kittinger jumped from 102,800 feet (19.5 miles) and hit a top speed of about 614 mph, as the Pentagon and the still very young NASA were trying to get a handle on how humans would be affected by high-altitude atmospheric flight and space travel. Then, the team will gather the envelope into a large truck, a process that can take several hours."īaumgartner, a veteran of well more than 2,300 skydives who has been training for this moment for five years, was looking to surpass milestones established more than 50 years ago. A nylon 'destruct line' will release the helium so that the balloon returns to Earth. The Red Bull Stratos site (yes, he's backed by the maker of energy drinks) describes the process this way:Īfter Felix has landed, Mission Control will trigger the separation of the capsule and balloon, so that the capsule can descend under its parachute. Both the balloon and the capsule are expected to make a return trip to Earth for recovery by Baumgartner's team. ![]()
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