#jump from space

[strangenewwords]

[miss-laura90]

GoPro: Red Bull Space Jump - The Full Story

Skip to 2:10 for when he's about to step out. This makes me breathless! So awe inspiring!

[georgecgrimaldis-blog-blog]

George C. Grimaldis shares a video:

Felix Jumps At 128k feet! Red Bull Stratos - freefall from the edge official video HD (by EzektuS)

[thatogdenguy]

They told me "The sky is the limit"

so I jumped from space.

made this :)

[newstfionline]

Felix Baumgartner's jump from space: By the numbers

The Week, October 15, 2012 Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner stepped onto the edge of a specially rigged space capsule on Sunday, stared at the ground 24 miles below, and bravely leaped into the history books. The supersonic dive, broadcast live worldwide as part of the Red Bull Stratos mission, clinched multiple world records for the 43-year-old pilot. He became the first skydiver to break the sound barrier, completed the highest-altitude skydive in history, the longest freefall without a parachute, and the fastest speed ever achieved during a skydive. A brief look at Baumgartner's historic jump, by the numbers:

128,100: Altitude, in feet, from which Baumgartner jumped. That's 24 miles above the ground, and "four times higher than most passenger jets fly," says Ryan Owens at ABC News.

2.5: Hours he spent ascending through the atmosphere

10 to 20: Seconds Baumgartner spent spinning out of control when he first jumped out of the capsule. "At a certain R.P.M.," said Baumgartner, "there's only one way for blood to leave your body, and that's through your eyeballs. That means you're dead. That was what we feared the most." Luckily, he was able to gain control over his body once the atmosphere thickened.

260: Seconds that Baumgartner spent free-falling through space before deploying his parachute

690: The sound barrier, in miles per hour

833.9: The world-record speed, in miles per hour, that Baumgartner hit while falling (Mach 1.24)

119,846: Feet Baumgartner plummeted before deploying his parachute--also a world record

300: People who worked on the Red Bull Stratos mission, including 70 engineers, scientists, and physicians

5: Years of planning before the Red Bull Stratos finally happened

30: Cameras used to record the stunt

40: Television stations, including the Discovery Channel, that showed the jump live

8 million: People who tuned in to watch the jump online, easily crushing the 500,000 YouTube livestream record set by the London Summer Olympics

10: Minutes that passed from the time Baumgartner jumped to the moment he raised to raise his fist victoriously while standing on solid ground. "Soon he was hugged by his mother and father," says Zelle Pollon at Reuters. "And his girlfriend jumped up and wrapped her legs around him."

Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters, Washington Post

[420fucku]

Legendary jump!

[newstfionline]

Daredevil Jumps, and Lands on His Feet

By John Tierney, NY Times, October 14, 2012 ROSWELL, N.M.--Felix Baumgartner, the professional daredevil, said he was not thinking about setting records or collecting scientific data in the moments before he jumped from a capsule more than 24 miles high.

He was just thinking about making it back to Earth.

"Trust me, when you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It's not about breaking records anymore. It's not about getting scientific data. It's all about coming home," Mr. Baumgarter said after returning by helicopter to mission control in Roswell.

"It was harder than I expected," he said.

People around the world watched on the Web as Mr. Baumgartner stood on the edge of his capsule completing a final checklist, then jumped into a near vacuum at above 127,000 feet, or more than 24 miles. Minutes later he landed on his feet in the eastern New Mexico desert, and lifted his arms in victory.

Back at mission control and in a waiting room, his support team and family cheered.

Mr. Baumgartner, 43, a former Austrian paratrooper, took 2 hours 21 minutes to reach the height, lifting off in an enormous helium balloon that smoothly carried him through the critical first 4,000 feet--called the Dead Zone because it would be impossible to parachute to safety.

From the sky above the New Mexico desert he had hoped to make the highest jump in history and become the first sky diver to break the speed of sound.

His leap seemed to be the longest ever, beating the existing distance record by about 25,000 feet, but exact times, distances and other records were not immediately known; mission control said it first needed to retrieve the data from computer chips in Mr. Baumgartner's suit.

Before the jump, Mr. Baumgartner went through a checklist with help from Joe Kittinger, 84, the retired Air Force colonel who in 1960 jumped from 102,800 feet, setting records that remained more than half a century later--and that Mr. Baumgartner was hoping to break.

The mission required the largest balloon ever used for a manned flight. Made of 40 acres of ultrathin plastic, it had been described as an inflated dry-cleaning bag that would fill the Los Angeles Coliseum.

When inflated and attached to Mr. Baumgartner's pressurized capsule, the balloon towered 750 feet above the ground.

An earlier attempt to inflate the balloon and carry out the mission had to be abandoned last week because of weather. The winds at the balloon's height and at the ground had to be less than three miles an hour for it to be launched safely, so that there was no chance of the balloon lurching and smashing the capsule into the ground.

Until the last minute on Sunday, it was not certain that the mission would actually happen.

Mr. Baumgartner, wearing a pressurized suit to survive in the near vacuum at the edge of space, had hoped reach a speed of more than 700 miles an hour. He was backed by a NASA-style mission control operation at an airfield in Roswell that involved 300 people, including more than 70 engineers, scientists and physicians who have been working for five years on the project, called Red Bull Stratos, after the drink company that has financed it.

Besides aiming at records, the engineers and scientists on the Red Bull Stratos team are gathering and publishing reams of data intended to help future pilots, astronauts and perhaps space tourists survive if they have to bail out.

"We're testing new space suits, escape concepts, and treatment protocols for pressure loss at extreme altitudes," said the Red Bull Stratos medical director, Dr. Jonathan Clark, who formerly oversaw the health of space shuttle crews at NASA. "There are so many things that could go wrong here that we're pushing the technical envelope."

While building the customized suit and capsule, the team of aerospace veterans had to contend with one crucial uncertainty: What happens to the human body when it breaks the sound barrier? There was also one major unexpected problem for Mr. Baumgartner, known to his fans as Fearless Felix.

Although he had no trouble jumping off buildings and bridges, and soaring across the English Channel in a carbon-fiber wing, he found himself suffering panic attacks when forced to spend hours inside the pressurized suit and helmet. At one point in 2010, rather than take an endurance test in it, he went to an airport and fled the United States. With the help of a sports psychologist and other specialists, he learned techniques for dealing with the claustrophobia.

One of the techniques Mr. Baumgartner developed for dealing with claustrophobia was to stay busy throughout the ascent. Mr. Baumgartner conversed steadily, in Austrian-accented English, with Mr. Kittinger, a former fighter pilot whose deep voice exuded the right stuff as he confidently went through a 40-item checklist rehearsing every move that Mr. Baumgartner would make when it came time to leave the capsule--tasks like sliding his seat forward, checking his parachutes, and carefully opening the hatch.

"Item 38: stand up on the exterior step but be sure to duck your head down low as you go out that door," Mr. Kittinger said. After Mr. Baumgartner confirmed that and the next two steps, Mr. Kittinger said, "The rest is yours."

They finished that rehearsal one hour into the ascent, after the balloon had ascended safely through the jet stream and reached 60,000 feet. It was still visible from the ground by naked eye. Through binoculars, it could be observed growing wider as the helium expanded in the thinning stratosphere.

As the balloon rose in the sky, viewers from around the world went to YouTube to watch a live video stream from the capsule and mission control. By the time Mr. Baumgartner made his leap into space, the audience grew to a peak of 8 million watching at the same time, which appeared to be a record; YouTube's previous record for concurrent viewership was around half a million, set during the Summer Olympics earlier this year.

Besides being his most complex challenge, the stratospheric jump is also the one most likely to be made into a buddy movie, thanks to the friendship that he developed with Mr. Kittinger, who helped train Mr. Baumgartner.

Mr. Kittinger, a former test pilot, set his records in a 1960 trip to the stratosphere. Early during that ascent, also over New Mexico, in an Air Force balloon, one of his pressurized gloves leaked, but he was so determined to keep going that he did not report the problem, even after his hand swelled to twice its normal size.

Ignoring the pain, he rode the balloon up to 102,800 feet and said a short prayer--"Lord, take care of me now"--before stepping off. He reached a speed of 614 miles an hour and spent 4 minutes, 36 seconds in free fall. Those records were repeatedly challenged during the ensuing half century, sometimes with fatal consequences.

The original stratospheric jump by Mr. Kittinger was part of an Air Force program studying ways to help pilots survive high-altitude bailouts. It experimented with a small parachute, called a drogue, to prevent the jumper's body from going into a flat spin--a hazard that almost killed Mr. Kittinger in a preliminary jump in 1959. When his drogue chute became entangled around his neck, his body spun at 120 revolutions a minute, causing him to black out until his emergency parachute automatically deployed. An improved version of that drogue chute is now used by military pilots who have to bail out in the ejection-seats used by pilots.

Mr. Baumgartner was equipped with his own customized high-tech drogue chute but as a precaution--to be activated only if he began spinning out of control. Otherwise, he planned to avoid using it because the drogue chute would have slowed him down just enough to prevent him from going supersonic.

To avoid spinning out of control, Mr. Baumgartner practiced doing a bunny hop out of the capsule and controlling his body so that it rotated into headfirst position for the supersonic descent.

"We try to anticipate as much as we can about supersonic speed," Dr. Clark said before the jump, "but we don't really know, because nobody has done this before."

[vivala-bee-blog]

This crazy as man! 

39,044-metre free fall! No doubt the craziest thing I've been alive to witness (not in person - through the use of the internet.. but still). The stupidiest most, exciting, most brilliant thing ever. He is my newest hero!

Felix Baumgartner, you legend.