Felix Baumgartner took his stratospheric leap from 128,097 feet on Sunday and landed safely on both feet around 10 minutes later, touching down so gracefully that he made the whole thing look easy. Then he fell to his knees and raised his fists in triumph as his family, hundreds of people supporting his mission and, no doubt, people watching worldwide via the Internet cheered.
It was the perfect ending to an almost perfect mission that saw the Austrian adventurer reach an unofficial speed of 706 mph during a free fall of 4 minutes and 19 seconds. It remains to be seen whether he broke the speed of sound as he'd hoped, but he did set unofficial records for the highest skydive and highest manned balloon flight in history.
"It was harder than I expected," Baumgarter said after returning to mission control in Roswell, New Mexico, according to The New York Times. "Trust me, when you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It's not about breaking records anymore. It's not about getting scientific data. It's all about coming home."
By: Chuck Squatriglia, Edited by: Nate Lanxon
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via Wired.co.uk
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/14/felix-space-jump
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