BAUM’S AWAY: Felix Baumgartner jumps out of a balloon-lifted capsule 24 miles above Earth yesterday, and waves after landing on his feet in Roswell, NM. He set a record by breaking the sound barrier with a top speed of 833.9 mph. (AFP)
He went from man to speeding bullet in a matter of seconds.
Human rocket Felix Baumgartner wowed the world yesterday by breaking the sound barrier in nothing more than a spacesuit — leaping from 24 miles above the Earth and calmly walking away unaided after landing in a field in Roswell, NM.
“When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about of breaking records anymore,” the Austrian daredevil, 43, said afterward. “The only thing you want is to come back alive.”
The jump — during which “Fearless Felix” hit a top speed of 833.9 mph, well above the speed of sound at 768 mph — came on the 65th anniversary of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Chuck Yeager’s famed flight in which he became the first man to break the sound barrier in an airplane.
The 89-year-old Yeager flew in the back seat yesterday of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California’s Mojave Desert, the area where he first achieved the feat in 1947.
With yesterday’s jump, Baumgartner, a former paratrooper, broke several records: fastest descent by a man outside a craft, highest free fall and the highest manned balloon trip.
The only record he fell short of breaking was longest free fall in terms of time. Baumgartner fell for 4 minutes, 22 seconds before activating his parachute, just shy of the 4:36 mark set in 1960 by retired Air Force Col. Joseph Kittinger, now 84.
Before the leap, Baumgartner was lifted to the heavens in a capsule in a three-hour helium balloon ride.
There was an early question over whether his face shield fit properly. In the first minutes of the jump, he spun like a top before straightening out.
Any foul-ups with his suit amid the minus-70 degree temperatures would have surely led to a grisly death.
His feat was seen by a YouTube record of 7.3 million simultaneous viewers and broadcast live on 40 TV stations in 50 nations.