The Supersonic Man: Felix Baumgartner

Salzburg (AUSTRIA) — “We think the sonic boom hap­pened not as he went in to the sound bar­rier but when he slowed back down, said Dr. Jonathan Clark, the mission’s med­ical direc­tor and for­merly a six-time Space Shut­tle Crew Sur­geon. “We hear the Shut­tle when it comes back through the sound bar­rier; it makes the same noise. And so although this was qui­eter, when four teams on the ground in New Mex­ico, includ­ing expert per­son­nel, all heard it, we knew that – no ques­tion – he broke the sound barrier.”

The team is ana­lyz­ing the record­ing, includ­ing use of an algo­rithm typ­i­cally employed by NASA, to pre­cisely deter­mine where the sonic boom occurred. But in the mean­time, tech­ni­cal project direc­tor Art Thomp­son con­firmed, “Hav­ing reached an esti­mated Mach 1.24, Felix is now def­i­nitely the fastest man on earth.”

While Baum­gart­ner him­self explained that he didn’t feel the shock­wave as he passed through the speed of sound, Clark acknowl­edged that the team expe­ri­enced some anx­ious moments, espe­cially when Baum­gart­ner went into a spin – which early analy­sis sug­gests lasted some 40 sec­onds before the 43-year-old man­aged to straighten out using skills trained over hun­dreds of sim­u­la­tions. “Felix was max­i­mally pre­pared to deal with the spin, and he fully under­stood that the essence of the mis­sion was a flight test pro­gram,” Clark noted. “We were con­cerned, but we were all pre­pared. Felix endured an incred­i­ble feat, and the essence of the pro­gram was his abil­ity to go through the sound bar­rier and recover from the spin.”

Life sup­port engi­neer Mike Todd agreed, “Felix started this pro­gram as a BASE jumper and sky­diver and ended as a test pilot – he was the per­fect guy for the job.”

Clark also remarked, “For some­body to jump from near space and sur­vive the tran­si­tion through the sound bar­rier had never been done before, and this has con­tributed immensely to the sur­vival advance­ments for future space­craft. Already a lot of com­pa­nies are talk­ing about: What did we learn? How soon can we get this infor­ma­tion? And so this is going to make a sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence. It was a true avi­a­tion milestone.”

Thomp­son added, “The fact that it was a flight test pro­gram was why we were able to assem­ble this lead­ing team of experts to develop the mis­sion; it was about sci­ence and learn­ing – the process of sav­ing people’s lives. We will ana­lyze this data for months, if not years, to come. All of this fur­thers the future of aero­space – and from the reac­tions we’ve been see­ing, it has also inspired a lot of young peo­ple to think about a career in aero­space or engi­neer­ing: that’s really close to my heart.”

Thomp­son went on, “Our suit and cap­sule were safety devices that pro­vided full life sup­port of the kind that could be valu­able if an air­craft has a breach in its hull. For safety, even our backup sys­tems had backup sys­tems. There is a lot of inter­est from NASA and the Air Force in the results.”

Not­ing that his para­chute sys­tem was another impor­tant com­po­nent that would have saved him even in the event of uncon­scious­ness, Baum­gart­ner said, “Dur­ing the last five years, the team has con­cen­trated on devel­op­ing equip­ment and pro­ce­dures for safety in what is essen­tially a bailout sit­u­a­tion. I am going to stop now with BASE jump­ing because I have closed that chap­ter, but at the same time we have opened a new door for the safety of manned flight into space.”

The ath­lete, who the night before had joined the entire mis­sion team for a two-hour live tele­vi­sion spe­cial that recapped the his­toric achieve­ment, noted that he is prepar­ing to enter a new phase of his life as a heli­copter pilot — a pro­fes­sion he’s dreamed of since child­hood and for which he’s already licensed. “You need chal­lenges, a rea­son to get up in the morn­ing, and I will be fly­ing moun­tain res­cues,” he com­mented. “It will be inter­est­ing and I will still be in the air.”

Baum­gart­ner is also prepar­ing to take on a pre­vi­ously unfore­seen role, as last week United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited him to become a youth ambas­sador for the orga­ni­za­tion. “In the next weeks I will process what has hap­pened and work with the United Nations to find out how I can play a role,” Baum­gart­ner said. “I would love to have kids of my own some­day, but in the mean­time it would be won­der­ful to work with chil­dren around the world.”

“My advice to Felix as he moves on is to take advan­tage of this oppor­tu­nity to be an Ambas­sador for the UN and encour­age the youth of the world,” said Col. Joe Kit­tinger, the men­tor who held the records Baum­gart­ner broke in New Mex­ico. Look­ing around at a team that besides Clark, Thomp­son, and Todd also included high per­for­mance direc­tor Andy Wal­she and sky­div­ing con­sul­tant Luke Aikins, Kit­tinger stated, “As for the rest of us, I am sure we will all look for other chal­lenges, but we will never have one as excit­ing as Red Bull Stratos.”

(Story cour­tesy Red Bull Stratos)