Space Jump

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He should have yelled......"red bull, it gives you wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings"   

[Fred]

amazing stuff !! but the guys a nut   

A nut with a capital "N" 

[Drache]

Super crazy, this guy has some serious balls!!! Very cool but I think he was very lucky as if he had not came out of that flat spin it may have ended badly. Glad to see him get it done I had been waiting since March to watch it!!!

I was reading that somewhere that they guy who previously held the record was saying that those spins are normal. I was thinking if he had to close his eyes during the spin to not get disoriented.

That man was Joe Kittinger who was on Felix's team for this jump, he was the old guy talking to Felix the whole time. Joe created the record back in 1960. His first attempted from 76,000 feet almost killed him when Joe's drogue chute wrapped around his neck and put into a flat spin that made him pass out. Only his AAD saved him when he chute auto deployed at 10,000 feet. The third attempt was to 102,000 feet and Joe's glove failed. His hand swelled to twice it's size but Joe refused to tell the ground crew about it because he didn't want them to cancel the jump.

Felix went into a nasty end over end spin. This was partially expected. At that altitude the low air density meant that you couldn't really control your body. Felix was supposed to have done a Delta formation with his body. He over did it when he leaped and over his went. He couldn't control himself until he dropped below the speed of sound, when the air got denser.

Within 30 seconds felix broke the sound barrier. There wouldn't have been any "sonic boom" at that altitude once again due to the air density. One thing Joe Kittinger said was that there was no sound from "rushing wind" until he hit 70,000 feet, then it sounded like a freight train.

Felix hit a top speed of just over 833 miles an hour. At that altitude it means mach 1.24.

I can't figure out how the parachute works at the speed of sound.  I would think you would either be dismembered or the 'chute would be shredded.   

If Felix pulled at those speeds he would have broken his back or worse. He had to wait until the air got denser. 20 seconds after breaking the sound barrier he would have started slowing down to the denser air. Felix waited until he was at 6,000 feet if I remember correctly to pull his chute. By then he would have slowed down to the normal terminal velocity of approx 140 miles an hour.

The jump was almost cancelled due to the heating for Felix's visor malfunctioning. They went ahead anyways and the visor fogged up when Felix jumped.

Felix broke many world records that day. The only one he didn't break was Joe Kittinger's "Longest Freefall" record. Since Felix was trying to break the speed of sound he didn't use a drogue chute to steady himself which would have also slowed his decent. Even going 833mph he was still only 6 seconds short of breaking that record though. Highest Freefall, Highest manned balloon flight, and fastest freefall were the records he earned.

Another interesting bit of trivia, Felix's plan was for only 122,000 feet. But he said he would jump from wherever the balloon would stop climbing. Scientists believed that 125,000 would be where the balloon would stop. For a few seconds it looked like they were right as the rate of ascent slowed to a crawl after 122,000 feet. But at 124,000 feet the balloon suddenly started ascending TWICE as fast as it had gone before. The average ascent speed was 5 meters a second from take off to about 122,000 feet. But at 124,000 feet the balloon suddenly picked up to 10 meters a second! So fast they actually had to start letting helium out of the balloon less Felix just float too high.

In the video you would see that once he hit 128,000 feet they opened the balloon to keep it at that level but it kept bouncing from 128,000 feet down to 127,000 and back up. They were having a hard time keeping it steady. This was due to the delay of transmissions from the ground to the balloon.

Oh and this was Felix's last jump. He was retiring from Skydiving after this. I believe this jump makes 2,501 in his log book.

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Thanks Drache.      Great info.       
I still think it's crazy as hell.   Not worth dying for just to be the first.