Roswell, NM -
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
Associated Press
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
person 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 friends and spectators who closely followed his
descent in a live television feed at the command center
"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
pod, 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 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 FAI, an
international group that works to determine and maintain the integrity
of aviation records. He said the speed calculations were preliminary
figures.
During the first part of
Baumgartner's free fall, anxious onlookers at the command center held
their breath as he appeared to spin uncontrollably.
"When I was spinning first
10, 20 seconds, I never thought I was going to lose my life but I was
disappointed because I'm going to lose my record. I put seven years of
my life into this," he said.
He added: "In that
situation, when you spin around, it's like hell and you don't know if
you can get out of that spin or not. Of course it was terrifying. I was
fighting all the way down because I knew that there must be a moment
where I can handle it."
Baumgartner said traveling
faster than sound is "hard to describe because you don't feel it." The
pressurized suit prevented him from feeling the rushing air or even the
loud noise he made when breaking the sound barrier.
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 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 about 40 miles east of Roswell and landing smoothly. 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 accomplishment came on the 65th anniversary of the day
that U.S. test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first person to officially
break the sound barrier in a jet. Yeager, in fact, commemorated that
feat on Sunday, flying in the back seat of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the
sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California's Mojave
Desert.
At Baumgartner's
insistence, some 30 cameras recorded his stunt. Shortly after launch,
screens at mission control showed the capsule, dangling from the massive
balloon, as it rose gracefully above the New Mexico desert, with cheers
erupting from organizers. Baumgartner could be seen on video, calmly
checking instruments inside.
The dive was, in fact, more than just a stunt. NASA is eager to improve its blueprints for future spacesuits.
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; company officials said
the event broke a site record with more than 8 million simultaneous live
streams at its peak.
After Baumgartner landed,
his sponsor, Red Bull, posted a picture of him 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 long 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.
Red Bull has never said how much the long-running, complex project cost.
Although he broke the sound
barrier, the highest manned-balloon flight record and became the man to
jump from the highest altitude, he failed to break Kittinger's 5 minute
and 35 second longest free fall record. Baumgartner's was timed at 4
minutes and 20 seconds in free fall.
He said he opened his parachute at 5,000 feet because that was the plan.
"I was putting everything
out there, and hope for the best and if we left one record for Joe -
hey, it's fine," he said when asked if he intentionally left the record
for Kittinger to hold. "We needed Joe Kittinger to help us break his own
record and that tells the story of how difficult it was and how smart
they were in the 60's. He is 84 years old, and he is still so bright and
intelligent and enthusiastic."
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.
Before that, though, he said, "I'll go back to LA to chill out for a few days ... will take it easy as hell, trust me."
___
AP Science Writer Alicia Chang and Associated Press writer Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Copyright
2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
