When skydiver Felix Baumgartner stepped from his space capsule on Sunday from 128,000 feet, he broke two records that stood for more than 50 years and he also kept a promise to himself. "The only thing you want is you want to come back alive because you don't want to die in front of your parents, your girlfriend," he told reporters a few hours after he parachuted to a seemingly effortless stand-up landing in New Mexico Sunday. His was the highest-ever parachute jump and the highest manned balloon flight. Baumgartner is reported to have reached Mach 1.24 during freefall, which made it the fastest freefall. At four minutes and 18 seconds it was not the longest-duration freefall. That record still belongs to Col. Joe Kittinger, who waited until 4:30 to pull the chute on his 1960 jump. Baumgartner's successful jump took place exactly 65 years, to the day, after Chuck Yeager first broke the speed of sound in the rocket-powered X1. Like Yeager's flight, Baumgartner's jump had its potentially dangerous moments.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/news/red-bull-stratos-jump-breaks-longstanding-records