“It’s like sailing without wind meaning your skills do not work.” “This was a very alarming moment because there is no protocol,” the 53-year-old said as he plummeted at a speed of 843.6 mph (1357.64 kmh) – 1.25 times that of sound. “Once I was on my way, I slowly started to spin in one direction, then I start spinning in the opposite direction, and then I really started spinning faster and faster and faster,” Baumgartner explained.īaumgartner hadn’t been able to train for freefall in space, so that spinning sensation was extremely disconcerting. He spent the next nine minutes falling through the sky, half of which were in complete freefall. The Austrian jumped from the balloon effectively while in space, where the normal rules of sky diving do not apply. "The only thing that I didn't know when I landed was: did I break the speed of sound," says Baumgartner. “I had to look at the suit like it is my friend, not my enemy,” adds Baumgartner. The prospect of lasting up to eight hours in the pressure suit would take Baumgartner a number of months – and help from psychiatrists and sports psychologists – to accept. So once the visor is down, all you can hear is yourself breathing.” You’re completely separated from the outside world. It always feels like you’re breathing through a pillow. “It’s very uncomfortable,” says Baumgartner. The suit had to be both pressurized and able to handle temperatures of minus 72° Celsius (minus 97.6° Farenheit). ![]() It took as many as 20 people to move without damaging the balloon’s material that was 10 times thinner than a sandwich bag.īut the biggest threat to the project was perhaps the most unforeseen – Baumgartner’s mental fortitude. ![]() ![]() To get Baumgartner up to the stratosphere, his team had to construct a helium balloon the size of 33 football pitches – weighing 3,708lbs. “Sometimes we’d go into a meeting with three problems and then leave that meeting eight hours later with another five … and no solution for the previous problems.” “We thought, we’re going to build the capsule, build the pressure suit, practice for a while, and then we go all the way up to the stratosphere and come back to Earth at supersonic speed,” says Baumgartner. It was a project that was initially expected to take 24 months from start to finish but ended up a taking up a number more years. Baumgartner's suit took him months to get used to wearing.
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