Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
On October 14, 2012, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner opened the hatch on his pressurized balloon gondola and gazed down at the earth some 128,000 feet below. After making some final adjustments to his pressure suit, parachute, and cameras, he stepped to the edge of the hatch and leaped out into space. After 42 seconds he had reached a speed of 843 mph, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier without a vehicle. Baumgartner continued to fall for 3 minutes, 34 seconds until his parachute deployed at an altitude of 8,200ft. Then, approximately 5 minutes after leaving the balloon, Baumgartner touched down safely in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. The Stratos jump, a publicity stunt sponsored by energy drink manufacturer Red Bull, was watched by over 9.5 million people online and resulted in Baumgartner clinching three official skydiving records: highest jump altitude, highest vertical speed, and longest free-fall without a drogue chute. However, these records were first set more than 6 decades before, and under very different circumstances. The man who set them had none of Baumgartner’s lavish corporate sponsorship or advanced technology, and he jumped not for publicity or thrills but in order to save lives. This is the story of Captain Joseph Kittinger and Project Excelsior - a true leap into the unknown.
In the 1950s, as jet aircraft began flying ever higher and faster, the US Air Force became concerned about the ability of its pilots to safely bail out in an emergency. At altitudes above 40,000 feet, the air is too thin for a regular parachute to properly deploy, meaning that pilots must free-fall a considerable distance before opening their chutes. However, upon ejection a pilot may be injured, unconscious, disoriented or otherwise unable to deploy their parachute manually. This danger was graphically demonstrated in 1944 when Air Force Colonel Mel Boynton jumped from 41,000 feet in an attempt to demonstrate proper free-fall technique. Boynton’s parachute never opened, the Colonel still staring at his stopwatch when he impacted the ground.
There was also another, more insidious danger. In 1953 the US Air Force carried out Operation High Dive, a series of tests wherein anthropomorphic dummies were dropped from high-altitude balloons. The tests revealed that an unstabilized human body free-falling at high altitudes has a tendency to enter a lethal flat spin of up to 465 rpm. Thus even if a pilot were able to deploy their parachute at the right altitude, they would be dead long before they reached it.
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila
On October 14, 2012, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner opened the hatch on his pressurized balloon gondola and gazed down at the earth some 128,000 feet below. After making some final adjustments to his pressure suit, parachute, and cameras, he stepped to the edge of the hatch and leaped out into space. After 42 seconds he had reached a speed of 843 mph, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier without a vehicle. Baumgartner continued to fall for 3 minutes, 34 seconds until his parachute deployed at an altitude of 8,200ft. Then, approximately 5 minutes after leaving the balloon, Baumgartner touched down safely in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. The Stratos jump, a publicity stunt sponsored by energy drink manufacturer Red Bull, was watched by over 9.5 million people online and resulted in Baumgartner clinching three official skydiving records: highest jump altitude, highest vertical speed, and longest free-fall without a drogue chute. However, these records were first set more than 6 decades before, and under very different circumstances. The man who set them had none of Baumgartner’s lavish corporate sponsorship or advanced technology, and he jumped not for publicity or thrills but in order to save lives. This is the story of Captain Joseph Kittinger and Project Excelsior - a true leap into the unknown.
In the 1950s, as jet aircraft began flying ever higher and faster, the US Air Force became concerned about the ability of its pilots to safely bail out in an emergency. At altitudes above 40,000 feet, the air is too thin for a regular parachute to properly deploy, meaning that pilots must free-fall a considerable distance before opening their chutes. However, upon ejection a pilot may be injured, unconscious, disoriented or otherwise unable to deploy their parachute manually. This danger was graphically demonstrated in 1944 when Air Force Colonel Mel Boynton jumped from 41,000 feet in an attempt to demonstrate proper free-fall technique. Boynton’s parachute never opened, the Colonel still staring at his stopwatch when he impacted the ground.
There was also another, more insidious danger. In 1953 the US Air Force carried out Operation High Dive, a series of tests wherein anthropomorphic dummies were dropped from high-altitude balloons. The tests revealed that an unstabilized human body free-falling at high altitudes has a tendency to enter a lethal flat spin of up to 465 rpm. Thus even if a pilot were able to deploy their parachute at the right altitude, they would be dead long before they reached it.
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila
