Update: Felix Baumgartner became the first person to beak the sound barrier without traveling inside a craft. During his jump from more than 24 miles up, Baumgartner hit Mach 1.24, or 833.9 mph, according to the Associated Press. "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," Baumgartner said after the jump. "The only thing you want is to come back alive."
Sunday, 14 October at 3:15pm.: Felix Baumgartner made it. He landed safely on the ground after a 24-mile jump from the stratosphere. It was a record-breaking event, although it remains unclear whether the Austrian daredevil had managed to break the speed of sound during his free fall, which was one of the key goals of the mission.
Nine minutes after he jumped from the 11-by-8-foot capsule at 128,097 feet, making it the highest skydive on record, he was back on New Mexican soil. Baumgartner pierced the atmosphere at speeds as high as 700 miles per hour, which would suggest that the speed of sound was broken, although there was no confirmation yet, according to Reuters. Nearly 7.3 million were watching the “live” YouTube stream of the event right before Baumgartner jumped. NASA appeared to be one of those keeping close track of the event. NASA sent out a tweet congratulating Baumgartner and his team “on a record-breaking leap from the edge of space!”
Sunday, 14 October at 1:10 p.m.: Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian professional daredevil, was finally able to stop postponing his bid to become the first skydiver to break the sound barrier as he began his ascent to the stratosphere on Sunday morning. Baumgartner took off from the New Mexico desert in a huge helium balloon that carried a pressurized capsule at 9:30 am. His 23-mile ascent should take around three hours while the descent should last up to twentty minutes, reported Reuters. Some thirty cameras recorded the event.
Baumgartner is trying to break a fifty-year record held by Joe Kittinger, an adviser to his project, who jumped from a balloon flying at 102,800 feet and fell for four and a half minutes before opening his parachute in 1960. Baumgartner is now attempting a jump from 120,000 feet and free fall for five and a half minutes. About thirty seconds into the free fall, Baumgartner should be moving faster than the speed of sound, around 690 mph. There are more than three hundred people in the “NASA-style mission control” that is providing support for Baumgartner, including seventy people who have been working on the project for five years, noted The New York Times.
While it may seem like a vanity project aimed at simply breaking records, all the engineers and scientists working on the effort say the data they will collect during the jump will be able to help pilots and astronauts in the future if they have to exit their crafts. Also, assuming Baumgartner's high-tech spacesuit works as intended and protects him from the shock waves of breaking the sound barrier, it could lead to NASA certifying a new generation of spacesuits.
Baumgartner says this will be his last jump, as he has plans to settle down with his girlfriend when it's all over.
Rico says the girlfriend may have had something to do with that decision...
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