Felix Baumgartner: Another space hero

Space is a mystery that many hope to demystify every day. The possibilities to discover new things there are numerous.
Some just give up trying to unravel the mystery by pretending it is beyond our reach. Others just don’t seem to see these limitations. They dare to seek new challenges to make their lives more fun and exciting. And so, their thirst for thrills in life never dies down.
One such adventurer is an Austrian-born Felix Baumgartner. Today, he is a renowned face when it comes to the world of skydiving, although he has officially retired from it. After all, he blew everyone’s mind when he took his bone-chilling jump through space, a “supersonic free fall”, out of a capsule last October. It was a giant leap for him and mankind as well.
So what made him take up this challenge?
“The jump that Joe Kittinger made in the 1960s — which defined the record for height and speed until my jump last October — was considered legendary in the skydiving community. I am one of those guys who always wanted to be the first one to go where no man had ever gone before. Jumping from near-space and trying to break the sound barrier in a free fall had been a long-time goal of mine. When I realized that the data from such a jump could help to improve the safety level of future pilots and astronauts gave an enormous boost to my motivation. Even so, it took 20 years to hone my skills and make me believe that I was ready to take on the challenge safely.”
Since childhood, Baumgartner had been very keen to see the Earth from above. “Now when I look at my parents’ photos, it seems bizarre that I was constantly dangling from trees and hovering on rooftops. People assume I am an adrenalin junkie, but that’s not it at all. In fact, it just feels natural to me to be up high,” he says.
Asked what he wanted to become when he was a kid, he said, “Of course as a kid you go through various phases in life, but throughout my childhood I had two big dreams that never left me: Skydiving and flying helicopters.”
The wait was finally over when he took to the sky at the age of 16. “In Austria while growing up, this was the legal age for skydiving and as soon as I became eligible, I just roared out of excitement. That’s when I made my first jump confirming what I had thought all along: This was the sport for me,” Baumgartner said.
Jumping from such an unprecedented height on his record-breaking free fall had him spinning wildly. “I broke the speed of sound at about 34 seconds into my free fall. At 50 seconds, I reached my maximum speed: 1,357.6 kilometers per hour, which equals Mach 1.25. By the time I pulled my parachute — which was after nearly four and a half minute of free fall — my speed had slowed down to slightly over 190 kilometers per hour,” Baumgartner said.
The amount of hard work put into accomplishing this mission has been quite extraordinary. It involved a large team working day and night for seven years non-stop.
“The first five years were all about doing necessary experiments involving a team of highly qualified experts from their fields. There were some technical challenges that we needed to surmount like coping with unexpected conditions of the stratosphere. This is supposed to be a very hostile environment. There is very little oxygen, which makes it difficult to breathe. On top of that, the temperature is brutally low, as is the air pressure. Without protection, the fluids in a human body would have boiled and converted into bubbles. Not only that, we also experimented with the largest balloon ever used with a human aboard. In the end, we had to study the risks related to high-speed spinning in free fall.”
The experience Baumgartner gained from his previous projects in the lead-up to this space jump helped him get ready for this ultimate challenge, he said.
He also had to pass various physical tests.
“Some of my training specific to Red Bull Stratos included intense physical conditioning with a heavy emphasis on cardio for endurance. There were blood tests taken to evaluate my diet. Most importantly, I had to go through a procedure called “neural mapping”. This was done to record my brain activity while I was training to see how I’m naturally wired to perform. Even then, it wasn’t enough. I made stratospheric test jumps from two progressively higher altitudes leading up to the final jump.”
He also took part in varied activities like wind tunnel training, airplane jumps in the suit, gas balloon license training, bungee-jump rehearsals for perfect step-off from the capsule, and altitude chamber testing to rehearse everything in a simulated near-space environment.
To Baumgartner, his jumps are incomparable. He hardly wastes his time over engaging in their analogy. “Each jump was special to me in its own way and I learned from every one,” he said.
Grave injuries are inevitable in the world of extreme sports. But they can be avoided if the right precautions are taken.
“I’ve never had a major accident. I did have one mishap in a BASE jump a long time ago. (BASE jumpers jump from a fixed object and use a parachute to break their fall.) I allowed someone with insufficient experience to get involved in deploying my chute. I ended up with a leg injury that took a few weeks to heal, but the lesson I learned will last a lifetime”
To prepare himself properly for any project, Baumgartner always makes sure he evaluate the risks thoroughly and has planned for them appropriately. If the risk seems too high, he won’t take on the project.
“That’s why the team of experts was so important for Red Bull Stratos, to help me understand what I would be confronting and to find solutions for the situations that could arise. When you’re confident that you’ve studied the risks carefully, addressed all the possible contingencies, and know clearly what you need to do, then whatever fear you feel doesn’t have to be a negative thing. You can actually ‘use’ fear to keep you sharp.”
His jump has provided valuable information to the scientific community in terms of the first physiological data ever recorded from a person in supersonic free fall.
“What I am happy about is that it has inspired people around the world. Looking back isn’t really what I’m about. I’m always looking forward to the next challenge.”
Asked how he feels about his jump being inscribed in record books by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world governing body for aeronautic records, he said, “I feel relieved that all those years of hard work paid off with a successful result. I am proud that the team and I have been able to contribute information that can help researchers who are focused on improving aerospace safety. So many people in so many countries have followed our mission and offered their encouragement and congratulations. Their support has meant a lot to me.”
Although he has said goodbye to skydiving, he has found another goal: saving human lives. “Now I have more time to pursue my other childhood dream: flying helicopters. Even before my jump, I already had my private and commercial helicopter pilot licenses. I want to continue to sharpen those skills and use them in ways that can really help people, like piloting mountain rescues,” he said.
He has no idea yet what he would do when he grows old and grey. “Ask me in a few decades! From now on, my skydiving and BASE-jumping will be for fun, but I still love being in the air, flying helicopters, and so forth. Whatever I do, it’s hard to imagine that I’ll ever stop having goals or following my passions because I just love going fast.”

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