Next time you find yourself feeling bored of an afternoon, maybe don’t take a leaf out of the book of Felix Baumgartner! The Austrian daredevil spent his Sunday casually soaring 128,000 miles above earth – and then free falling from the edge of space back to Earth!
Mind-blowingly dangerous, the Red Bull Stratos stunt bagged Felix a few records – he became the first man to break the sound barrier in freefall, falling at a maximum speed of 1,342.8km/h. On top of this, he broke a further two world records – highest freefall and highest manned balloon flight. It took over two hours to make it to the 128,100-foot altitude, and after several safety checks and procedures, Felix stepped out of his balloon-powered pod and headed for his landing spot in New Mexico!
After a couple of minor glitches, and a scary few seconds of seemingly out-of-control-spinning, Felix managed to deploy his parachute and landed safely – on his feet! – after a 4:20 freefall back to earth. Applause rang out from around the world as millions of people watched his record-breaking mission live on the internet.
“It was an incredible up and down today, just like it’s been with the whole project,” a relieved Baumgartner said. “First we got off with a beautiful launch and then we had a bit of drama with a power supply issue to my visor. The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought I’d just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that I’d lose consciousness. I didn’t feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. We’ll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Watch the highlights of the incredible stunt here.
Find out more about Felix’s incredible flight at www.redbullstratos.com.
