CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)
— His blood could boil. His lungs could overinflate. The vessels in his brain
could burst. His eyes could hemorrhage.
And, yes, he
could break his neck while jumping from a mind-boggling altitude of 23 miles.
But the risk
of a gruesome death has never stopped "Fearless Felix"Baumgartner in
all his years of skydiving and skyscraper leaping, and it's not about to now.
Next Monday
over New Mexico,
he will attempt the highest, fastest free fall in history and try to become the
first skydiver to break the sound barrier.
"So
many unknowns," Baumgartner says, "but we have solutions to
survive."
The
43-year-old former military parachutist from Austria is
hoping to reach 690 mph, or Mach 1, after leaping from his balloon-hoisted
capsule over the desert near Roswell.
He will have
only a pressurized suit and helmet for protection as he tries to go supersonic
65 years after Chuck Yeager, flying an experimental rocket plane, became the
first human to go faster than the speed of sound.
Doctors,
engineers and others on Baumgartner's Red Bull-sponsored team have spent as
much as five years studying the risks and believe they have done everything
possible to bring him back alive. He has tested out his suit and capsule in two
dress rehearsals, jumping from 15 miles in March and 18 miles in July.
Baumgartner
will be more than three times higher than the cruising altitude of jetliners
when he hops, bunny-style, out of the capsule and into a near-vacuum where
there is barely any oxygen and less than 1 percent of the air pressure on
Earth.
If all goes
well, he will reach the speed of sound in about half a minute at an altitude of
around 100,000 feet. Then he will start to slow as the atmosphere gets denser,
and after five minutes of free fall, he will pull his main parachute. The
entire descent should last 15 to 20 minutes.
He will be
rigged with cameras that will provide a live broadcast of the jump via the
Internet, meaning countless viewers could end up witnessing a horrific
accident.
Baumgartner
is insistent on going live with his flight.
"We
want to share that with the world," he says. "It's like landing on
the moon. Why was that live?"
His team of
experts — including the current record-holder from a half-century ago, Joe
Kittinger, now 84 — will convene inside a NASA-style Mission Control in the wee
hours Monday for the liftoff of the helium balloon at sunrise.
"All
the things that can happen are varying degrees of bad," offers
Baumgartner's top medical man, Dr. Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon.
Clark was
married to space shuttle astronaut Laurel Clark, who was killed aboard Columbia while it
was returning to Earth in 2003, and he has dedicated himself to improving
astronauts' chances of survival in a high-altitude disaster.
NASA is
paying close attention, eager to improve its spacecraft and spacesuits for
emergency escape, but is merely an observer; the energy drink maker is footing
the bill and will not say how much it is costing.
The No. 1
fear is a breach of Baumgartner's suit.
If it breaks
open — if, say, he bangs into the capsule while jumping or supersonic shock
waves batter him — potentially lethal bubbles could form in his bodily fluids.
That's what's known as boiling blood. A Soviet military officer died in 1962
after jumping from a balloon at 86,000 feet; the visor of his helmet hit the
gondola and cracked.
During the
descent, the temperature could be as low as minus 70. Baumgartner's suit will
be all he has between his body and the extreme cold.
Then there's
the risk of a flat spin, in which Baumgartner loses control of his body during
the free fall and starts spinning. A long, fast spin, if left unchecked, could
turn his eyeballs into blood-soaked, reddish-purple orbs, and he could be left
temporarily blind. Also, a massive blood clot could form in his brain.
A small
stabilizing chute will automatically deploy if he goes into a flat spin and
blacks out or otherwise becomes incapacitated. He also has an emergency chute
that will automatically deploy if he is unable to pull the cord on his main chute.
Baumgartner's
team has a plan for every contingency but one: If the balloon ruptures shortly
after liftoff because of a gust of wind or something else, the capsule will
come crashing down with him inside. He won't have time to blow the hatch and
bail out.
"I have
every expectation that he'll come through this successfully based on our
analysis," Clark says, "but you know, it still is an unknown."
Kittinger
leapt from an open gondola on Aug. 16, 1960, from an altitude of 19.5 miles and
reached 614 mph, or Mach 0.9 — records that stand to this day. He was a captain
in the Air Force, and the military's Excelsior project was a test bed for the
nation's young space program.
Kittinger
has been Baumgartner's mentor, signing on with this new project after decades
of refusing others' requests.
Fearless
Felix insists he would not attempt the jump if the odds were against him.
"I
think they underestimate the skills of a skydiver," says Baumgartner, who
has made more than 2,500 jumps from planes, helicopters, landmarks and
skyscrapers, with no serious injuries.
If he makes
it back in one piece, Baumgartner plans on settling down with his girlfriend
and flying helicopters in the U.S. and Austria, performing mountain rescues and
firefighting.
"After
this," he promises, "I'm going to retire because I've been
successfully doing things for the last 25 years and I'm still alive."
___
Online:
Red Bull
Stratos: http://www.redbullstratos.com
National
Museum of the U.S. Air Force: http://tinyurl.com/2dsnn6
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