On 14 October 2012, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner stepped off a capsule hanging from a helium balloon 38,969 metres above eastern New Mexico and fell back to Earth, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier without engine power. In February 2014 GoPro released the footage from five cameras strapped to his pressure suit, and it shows exactly what he saw on the way down.
Red Bull Stratos: the key numbers
The mission, known as Red Bull Stratos, launched from Roswell International Air Center in New Mexico at 09:30 local time. The balloon took about two and a half hours to climb into the stratosphere, roughly 24 miles up, with Baumgartner sealed in a pressurised capsule beneath it.
- Exit altitude: 38,969.4 m (127,851 ft), as ratified by the FAI.
- Top speed: 1,357.6 km/h (843.6 mph), or Mach 1.25, reached about 42 seconds after leaving the capsule.
- Freefall distance: about 36,403 m (119,431 ft).
- Freefall time: 4 minutes 19 seconds until his parachute was fully open.
- Landing: on his feet in eastern New Mexico at about 12:17, some nine to ten minutes after he jumped.
Five GoPro cameras on the pressure suit
The five GoPro cameras on Baumgartner’s suit included views from his chest and close to his helmet. Together with the capsule cameras, they give three very different frames of reference: the step off the platform with the curve of the Earth below, the rotating body-mounted view during the fall, and the approach to the desert floor under canopy.
GoPro published the previously unreleased footage on YouTube at the start of February 2014 and used part of it in its Super Bowl advertisement that weekend.
Watch the Stratos jump through Baumgartner’s eyes
The video, GoPro: Red Bull Stratos – The Full Story, runs from the capsule door to the landing.
The flat spin and how he recovered
The most frightening part of the footage comes within the first minute. Baumgartner fell into an uncontrolled spin, and the horizon whips around the frame. “Feels like I have to pass out,” he radioed. After roughly 30 seconds he stabilised his body position, and the spin ended about 1 minute 23 seconds into the fall. “Stable as a rock,” came the reply from mission control.
That voice belonged to Joseph Kittinger, the retired US Air Force officer who had set the previous high-altitude jump record from 31,300 metres (102,800 ft) in 1960. Kittinger was Baumgartner’s mentor and served as capsule communicator throughout the flight.
Stratosphere, not space: putting the record in context
Headlines called it a “jump from space”, but at 39 km Baumgartner was still inside the stratosphere, far below the 100 km Kármán line often used as the edge of space. Air pressure at that height is a tiny fraction of the pressure at sea level, so he needed a full pressure suit, which is why the suit, capsule and balloon were as much a part of the achievement as the jump itself.
The live stream drew more than 9.5 million concurrent viewers on YouTube, a record at the time. Team principal Art Thompson said the data gathered could help future private space programmes and high-altitude pilots. Baumgartner’s altitude record stood until 2014, when Google executive Alan Eustace jumped from higher still.
For more footage from the air, see another perspective on airborne movement and a very different specialist parachute sequence.
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- Nate Bolt’s San Francisco-to-Paris Flight Time-Lapse
- Shawn Reeder’s Yosemite Range of Light
- Lightning in Slow Motion: Branches and Bright Pulses
- Farmington’s February 2013 Blizzard in Backyard Time-Lapse
- Nickson Gensis’s Typhoon Haiyan Footage from Hernani
Private video??? Please excuse my French, but this is plain bullSHIT.
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