12/31/2023 0 Comments Fall speed of soundJumping from 102,800 feet, Kittinger fell at 614mph, about nine-tenths the speed of sound a torn glove meant one of his hands swelled to twice its normal size. That was Colonel Joseph Kittinger, a test pilot, who completed a series of high-altitude jumps from a helium balloon in August 1960, part of an equipment-testing project for the agency that would become Nasa. He has set a few records – highest skydive by a Frenchman! – but if Fournier has done anything really newsworthy to date, it has been for the type of exploit heralded by a wry broadcaster saying: "And finally…"īaumgartner has been plotting his space jump for four years, Fournier for 20, and this autumn both projects are coming to a head – 50 years exactly since anyone even came close to leaping from such heights or plummeting at such speeds. Here, Fournier has made several attempts at a space jump, but all have gone wrong in the early stages – the very early stages. Plotting his space jump since the late 1980s, he was long ago banned by his own government from conducting the project in France (too dangerous) and has for the last 10 years been operating from a tiny airstrip in North Battleford, Canada. His equipment has been laboriously sourced from various abandoned military projects over two decades and his publicity machine consists of an ill-updated website plus a beleaguered press agent called Francine. The French former paratrooper is 66 and not backed by an energy drink. Michel Fournier's mission has not quite the same pizzazz. His effort to skydive from the edge of space – to "space jump" as the feat has come to be known – is backed by energy drink manufacturer Red Bull, who under the project banner Red Bull Stratos have outfitted Baumgartner with expensive kit, a hi-tech Californian base, a team of aeronautic and medical experts and funds fully to publicise the endeavour. Their plans share similar elements – helium balloons attached to mansize cradles, space-faring equipment, lots of complicated parachutes – but this pair could not be more different.īaumgartner is an extreme sportsman from Austria, steely, serious and a parachutist who has completed all kinds of dangerous and newsworthy stunts over his 41 years. They are Felix Baumgartner and Michel Fournier, rival daredevils who have long been formulating plans to travel up to 120,000 feet, far higher than any skydiver has yet been, from there to plunge back to Earth.
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