HIGHEST PARACHUTE JUMP ATTEMPT

EXREME SCIENCE OR DAREDEVIL MADNESS?
Sporting extremist, Felix Baumgartner is planning to smash the long-standing record for the highest ever parachute jump. The record has been held for the last 50 years by an American, Joe Kittinger who leapt from a balloon at 102,800ft.
The notorious Austrian hopes to smash the record by skydiving from a balloon at least 120,000ft. If successful he will also become the first person to travel faster than the speed of sound unaided by a machine.
'No-one really knows what that will be like,' said Baumgartner. 'The fact is you have a lot of different airflows coming around your body; and some parts of your body are in supersonic flow and some parts are in transonic flow. What kind of reaction that creates, I can't tell you,'
He hopes the project will gather scientific evidence about the stratosphere and the body’s ability to cope with extreme conditions at such high altitudes. He claims it may lead to the possibility of astronauts being brought back to earth alive in the event that a space vehicle malfunctions
'We want to prove a human person, if they have to bail out of a capsule from 120,000ft, can come back safely to Earth,'

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