Skydiver Felix Baumgartner planning 36km record bid
An Austrian adventurer planning the highest sky dive in history has announced that he will make the record attempt later this year. Felix Baumgartner will jump from a balloon 36.5km up, where any leak in his pressurised suit would cause his blood to vapourise. Read more
Aircraft have been travelling faster than the speed of sound--no simple accomplishment--since 1947. Now Felix Baumgartner wants to do the same thing, in freefall. Sometime this year, Baumgartner plans to step out of a balloon-suspended capsule at about 120,000 feet, not so very far from the edge of space, and race toward the earth at a rate that could reach Mach 1 or even slightly above. Read more
Ordinarily, Felix Baumgartner would not need a lot of practice in the science of falling. He has jumped off two of the tallest buildings in the world, as well as the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro (a 95-foot leap for which he claimed a low-altitude record for parachuting). He has sky-dived across the English Channel. He once plunged into the black void of a 623-foot-deep cave, which he formerly considered the most difficult jump of his career. But now Fearless Felix, as his fans call him, has something more difficult on the agenda: jumping from a helium balloon in the stratosphere at least 120,000 feet above Earth. Read more
It was supposed to be another giant leap for man. It was more of a giant misstep. Michel Fournier, a skydiver, was aiming to complete the world's highest skydive by leaping from the stratosphere at four times the height of a commercial jet's cruising altitude and plummet back to earth, breaking the sound barrier en route. In the end, the Frenchman failed to get even one foot off the ground... The helium balloon that was to have transported his fibreglass phone-booth capsule to 130,000ft malfunctioned, soaring into the sky without its cargo and leaving the 64-year-old daredevil stranded in the wheat fields of western Canada, his lifelong dream in tatters.
Weather permitting, 64-year-old Michel Fournier may already have climbed into his pressurized gondola and been carried for more than two hours by his 650-foot balloon to 130,000 feet (close to 25 miles high) above the earth -- where he may already have stepped out.
A 64-year-old French skydiver began final preparations for a stunt that will, should all go well, end in the pre-dawn darkness Monday with him rising slowly in a helium-powered balloon pod up to the very void of space and then stepping off.
If the weather co-operates, a giant metallic teardrop will rise into the sky over this Saskatchewan town Monday, just as the eastern horizon turns from black to red, and a silver-haired French skydiver will set off in search of three world records. Two and a half hours later, if all goes as planned, 64-year-old Michel Fournier will open the door of the capsule hanging from that balloon at a world-record altitude of 130,000 feet -- roughly 40 kilometres -- and step out.
In a little over two weeks, skydiving specialist Michel Fournier plans to break the world record for the highest skydive ever attempted. If all goes well, he will jump from a balloon at an altitude of around 131,000 feet, or 25 miles above Saskatchewan, Canada. At around 115,000 feet his body will blow through the sound barrier.