Suddenly, the vertigo.
Everything had been going well until it had started to go awry. It happened five months before Felix Baumgartner (53) rose to infinity to jump into the void.
On that day in May 2012, Baumgartner told the Red Bull technicians:
I have claustrophobia.
And the Red Bull Stratos project was going to go into crisis, because no one had foreseen that setback.
(Red Bull Stratos: a vacuum jump from the stratosphere to Earth, a jump that no other human being had attempted before: 38,969.4m altitude, almost 40km)
(...)
Everything had gone well until then: seven years of studies, commercialized jumps from the Petronas Towers and Corcovado Christ, and successful pressurization tests had anticipated a magical moment.
But now, Felix Baumgartner announced that he felt claustrophobic:
I can last an hour in the suit. I think four hours, no.
And what came then?
There were to be five months of meetings with psychiatrists and sports physiologists, all tending to Baumgartner on the couch, assuring him that he was the man.
And yes, the talks worked.
And for that very reason, on October 14, 2012, on a day like today ten years ago, Felix Baumgartner decided to fit into that tiny capsule and definitely go up and up, arousing the interest of 8.5 million viewers (it is the live event most often in the history of YouTube, whose platform was about to collapse) and the concern among doctors and scientists who monitored the Austrian parachutist.
"If he reached 40 km altitude and decided he didn't want to jump, Baumgartner was going to die, because he would never be able to return to Earth aboard that capsule," said Joe Kittinger, one of his trainers.
And yes, finally, the leap into the void.
-What did you feel? –Felix Baumgartner is asked in Space Jump, a documentary available today on Red Bull TV.
–Being there, in outer space, about to jump, was a pleasant and calm moment. It is something that cannot be anticipated and cannot be repeated. And everything was full of silence, nothing is comparable to that, not even the rest of the forest, because there you listen to nature. At that moment I only heard my breathing. And the sky was completely dark. I spent ten seconds like this. And I wish I had more time to enjoy it, but I couldn't run out of oxygen, so I had to hurry.
So he took one last step forward and surrendered to gravity, to the amazement of the world.
(...)
In his fall, the adventurer broke several records: he projected up to 1,357.6 km/h (Mach 1.25) and traveled 36,402.6 m in free fall.
The descent lasted three minutes and 48 seconds.
Felix Baumgartner landed in a desert territory of Roswell, in New Mexico.
(two years later, Alan Eustace jumped from 41,419.3 meters, although that new record was to have a much smaller significance)
–What did you feel when you fell, when you broke the sound barrier? – they ask Baumgartner.
-Any. They told me I could hear a supersonic boom. However, when I got to land, I had no idea that I had overcome that barrier.
And then, he flashes back to his childhood. He says that a year after that jump, his mother showed him a drawing that he had drawn in his childhood, when he was five years old. He sees himself in the parachute suit:
-And from what it seems, he saw me from jumping from the top, because the sun was very close.
Today, a millionaire on account of that adventure, Felix Baumgartner pilots helicopters.
