Red Bull Team Aims to Set New Freefall Record

January 28, 2010—It’s a record that’s stood for nearly 50 years. But a Red Bull team is planning to break it, and the longtime record holder is helping them do it. Since 1960, nobody has beat USAF Col. Joseph Kittinger’s altitude record for jumping from 102,800 feet - nearly 20 miles - and landing safely with a parachute. (Kittinger actually set a couple records with that jump: highest parachute jump, and the longest and the fastest freefall.) Plus, his achievement contributed valuable data that set the groundwork for the United States’ first space program. Now Col. Kittinger is helping skydiver/B.A.S.E. jumper Felix Baumgartner set four world records in a single jump. Baumgartner, an Austrian athlete and the first man to skydive across the English Channel gliding on a set of carbon fiber wings, will undertake a stratospheric balloon flight to 120,000 feet, or about 23 miles, and attempt a record-breaking freefall jump. The team plans to send Baumgartner aloft in a spacesuit inside a pressurized capsule carried by a helium balloon. It will take about two and a half hours to reach at least 120,000 feet. Baumgartner then will jump, and he expects to reach speeds in excess of Mach 1, or more than 690 mph within about 30 seconds, making him the first person ever to break the speed of sound with his own body. (Kittinger’s fall was at Mach 0.9, or 614 mph.) If successful, Baumgartner will also reach records for freefall altitude, highest manned balloon flight altitude and longest freefall duration. But more than just setting records, the attempt is expected to deliver valuable lessons in human endurance and high-altitude technology. The team plans to launch from a site in North America sometime this year, and will broadcast the attempt live over the Internet. “This is truly a step into the unknown,” Baumgartner said. “No one can accurately predict how the human body will react in the transition to supersonic speeds. But we’ve got to find out. Future aerospace programs need a way for pilots and astronauts to bail out at high altitude in case of emergency.” Kittinger told the Today Show that he was glad to be helping out with the effort, though it could mean the end of his own longstanding record. “Records are meant to be broken,” he said. “It’s human nature to go faster, higher, deeper.” Others have tried to break Kittinger’s record, none have succeeded, and some have died. The project has been in development for three years. Follow Baumgartner’s blog to find out what he is doing and how he is preparing.		Felix Baumgartner seen in the spacesuit he will wear during his 2010 jump, as photographer Sven Hoffman shows him some photos taken during a January 2010 photo shoot. Photo credit: http://felix-baumgartner.blogspot.com/ Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a plane above Dover in 2003 and became the first person to skydive across the English Channel. Photo credit: Getty In December 2007, Felix Baumgartner scaled a security barrier to leap off the world’s tallest building, the 509-metre Taipei 101 Tower in Taiwan. Photo credit: Reuters

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