After a disappointing cancellation for winds on Tuesday, Felix Baumgartner set a new world record after his space jump from the capsule of the Red Bull Stratos, all of which can be watched on video and was broadcast live online earlier. Today’s record breaking jump, during which Baumgartner himself fell through the sky faster than the speed of sound, came exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying in an the Bell X-1 experimental rocket plane.
Baumgartner left the ground Sunday in Roswell New Mexico in the Red Bull Stratos capsule lifted to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) by a helium-filled balloon. From his high perch at the edge of space the video shows Felix Baumgartner’s view looking down as he jumped from the capsule and fell to the Earth.
“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.”
Also, added to the record books for Baumgartner is a new world record for the highest manned balloon flight. While Baumgartner now holds the record for the highest free-fall skydive, the record for the longest freefall remains that of the previous holder for highest, Stratos’ project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger.