A SUCCESSFUL SUPERSON­­­­IC LEAP OR WHERE IS THE LIMIT OF HUMAN ABILITIES?

news piece by Natasha Safina 

On the 14th of October 2012 in the network of Red Bull Stratos project Felix Baumgartner jumped to Earth from a stratosphere.

That day 8 million of people including a big heap of experts, journalists and the closest people of Felix- his mother and girlfriend stared at the U-tube online video waiting. What for? To see whether Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian BASE jumper in his early forties can make a supersonic leap.
That jump was a well-organized company promoted by Red Bull to advertise their production: energetic drinks. So he trained a lot and there were two test jumps: on the 15th of March (from the height of 21,8km) and on the 25th of July (from the height of 29,4km). As they both were effective, the promo jump was to be on the 9th of October, but then delayed because of the weather conditions. All in all, on the 14th of October Felix climbed the space of stratosphere in the capsule on a helium balloon and after 2, 5 hour of climbing the height of 39, 1 km he jumped off. As he looked down at the earth before becoming the first man to ever break the sound barrier, the skydiver remarked: "It is overwhelming. I mean, that view, and also the fact that when you're standing there, there's not a single person on the whole planet who have experienced this moment. It's unique."

In his first minutes Felix lost control of the situation, but then braced himself and everything went alright. Having survived after that dizzying tumble, he didn’t even realize, he was literally falling into the World’s Guinness Book of the Records. So he set several records at once:

1) Undertook the highest manned balloon flight;

2) Set the highest speed of freefall (1,342 km per hour);

3) Became the first man to break the sound barrier outside the vehicle.

Though he didn’t break one record! This one set by a Russian parachute jumper Eugene Andreev in 1962(4 min 30 seconds in freefall). Felix commented on that, his carrier as a “fearless Felix” is over. He will soon get married and work as a. But now there are 7 milliard of people on the Earth. And nobody knows where the limit of human abilities is. It seems we can survive everything.