In an attempt to break a record from 1960, Felix Baumgartner will ride in a pressurized capsule to 120,000 feet and
step off.
If all goes as planned, the jump will happen later this year.
The video in the beginning of the clip is from Joe Kittenger's original leap from a slightly lower altitude. Kittenger has elsewhere described - sorry, can't find the link - the surreal feeling of plunging to Earth at very near the speed of sound with no outward indication of just how fast he was traveling. At the time of his jump in 1960, no human had ever gone higher and no one really understood what to expect. The challenge was to field test pressurized suits because at the altitudes to which he ascended exposure would quickly boil a human alive. Kittenger's willingness to risk everything helped create safer equipment for the astronauts that followed.
Baumgartner: "I think I've always been one in a place where no one has ever been before."
Wayne