On October 24, 2014, Alan Eustace broke the world record for the highest balloon flight and skydive of all time, releasing himself from a balloon at 135,908 feet. [1]
On October 24, 2014, Alan Eustace broke the world record for the highest balloon flight and skydive of all time, releasing himself from a balloon at 135,908 feet. [1]
In 2011, Eustace decided to pursue a stratosphere jump and met with Taber MacCallum, one of the founding members of Biosphere 2, to begin preparations for the project. Over the next three years, the Paragon Space Development technical team designed and redesigned many of the components of his parachute and life-support system. [2] [3] [4] The Paragon team integrated systems for the Stratospheric Explorer mission code named StratEx Space Dive. [5]
On October 24, 2014, Eustace made a jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Baumgartner's 2012 world record. [6] The launch-point for his jump was from an abandoned runway in Roswell, New Mexico, where he began his gas balloon-powered ascent early that morning. [6] He reached a reported maximum altitude of 135,908 feet (41.425 km; 25.7402 mi), but the final number submitted to the World Air Sports Federation was 135,889.108 feet (41.419000 km; 25.7365735 mi). [2] The balloon used for the feat was a zero-pressure balloons manufactured by the Balloon Facility of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad, India. [4] Eustace in his pressure suit hung tethered under the balloon, without the kind of capsule used by Felix Baumgartner. Eustace started his fall by using an explosive device to separate from the helium balloon. [3]
His descent to Earth lasted 4 minutes and 27 seconds [7] and stretched nearly 26 miles (42 km) with peak speeds exceeding 822 miles per hour (1,323 km/h), [6] setting new world records for the highest free-fall jump and total free-fall distance 123,414 feet (37.617 km; 23.3739 mi). [8] However, because Eustace's jump involved a drogue parachute, while Baumgartner's did not, their vertical speed and free-fall distance records remain in different categories. [1] [9]
Unlike Baumgartner, Eustace, a twin-engine jet pilot, was not widely known as a daredevil prior to his jump. [2]
Eustace's world record jump was featured in two episodes of STEM in 30 , a television show geared towards middle-school students by the National Air and Space Museum. [10]
The stratosphere is the second-lowest layer of the atmosphere of Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is composed of stratified temperature zones, with the warmer layers of air located higher and the cooler layers lower. The increase of temperature with altitude is a result of the absorption of the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation by the ozone layer, where ozone is exothermically photolyzed into oxygen in a cyclical fashion. This temperature inversion is in contrast to the troposphere, where temperature decreases with altitude, and between the troposphere and stratosphere is the tropopause border that demarcates the beginning of the temperature inversion.
A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who can exit from an aircraft at height and descend safely to earth.
Joseph William Kittinger II was an officer in the United States Air Force (USAF) who served from 1950 to 1978, and earned Command Pilot status before retiring with the rank of colonel. He held the world record for the highest skydive—102,800 feet (31.3 km)—from 1960 until 2012.
Wingsuit flying is the sport of skydiving using a webbing-sleeved jumpsuit called a wingsuit to add webbed area to the diver's body and generate increased lift, which allows extended air time by gliding flight rather than just free falling. The modern wingsuit, first developed in the late 1990s, uses a pair of fabric membranes stretched flat between the arms and flanks/thighs to imitate an airfoil, and often also between the legs to function as a tail and allow some aerial steering.
In aeronautics, a balloon is an unpowered aerostat, which remains aloft or floats due to its buoyancy. A balloon may be free, moving with the wind, or tethered to a fixed point. It is distinct from an airship, which is a powered aerostat that can propel itself through the air in a controlled manner.
Project Excelsior was a series of parachute jumps made by Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force in 1959 and 1960 from helium balloons in the stratosphere. The purpose was to test the Beaupre multi-stage parachute system intended to be used by pilots ejecting from high altitude. In one of these jumps Kittinger set world records for the longest parachute drogue fall, the highest parachute jump, and the fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere. He held the latter two of these records for 52 years, until they were broken by Felix Baumgartner of the Red Bull Stratos project in 2012, though he still holds the world record for longest time in free fall.
High-altitude balloons or stratostats are usually uncrewed balloons typically filled with helium or hydrogen and released into the stratosphere, generally attaining between 18 and 37 km above sea level. In 2013, a balloon named BS 13-08 reached a record altitude of 53.7 km.
A gas balloon is a balloon that rises and floats in the air because it is filled with a gas lighter than air. When not in flight, it is tethered to prevent it from flying away and is sealed at the bottom to prevent the escape of gas. A gas balloon may also be called a Charlière for its inventor, the Frenchman Jacques Charles. Today, familiar gas balloons include large blimps and small latex party balloons. For nearly 200 years, well into the 20th century, manned balloon flight utilized gas balloons before hot-air balloons became dominant. Without power, heat or fuel, untethered flights of gas balloons depended on the skill of the pilot. Gas balloons have greater lift for a given volume, so they do not need to be so large, and they can stay up for much longer than hot air balloons.
Lieutenant Commander Victor Alonzo Prather Jr. was an American flight surgeon famous for taking part in "Project RAM", a government project to develop the space suit. On May 4, 1961, Prather drowned during the helicopter transfer after the landing of the Strato-Lab V balloon flight, which set an altitude record for manned balloon flight which stood until 2012.
Felix Baumgartner is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper. He is widely known for jumping to Earth from a helium balloon from the stratosphere on 14 October 2012 and landing in New Mexico, United States, as part of the Red Bull Stratos project. Doing so, he set world records for skydiving an estimated 39 km (24 mi), reaching an estimated top speed of 1,357.64 km/h (843.6 mph), or Mach 1.25. He became the first person to break the sound barrier relative to the surface without vehicular power on his descent. He broke skydiving records for exit altitude, vertical freefall distance without a drogue parachute, and vertical speed without a drogue. Though he still holds the two latter records, the first was broken two years later, when on 24 October 2014, Alan Eustace jumped from 135,890 feet with a drogue.
Malcolm David Ross was a captain in the United States Naval Reserve (USNR), an atmospheric scientist, and a balloonist who set several records for altitude and scientific inquiry, with more than 100 hours flight time in gas balloons by 1961. Along with Lieutenant Commander Victor A. Prather (USN), he set the altitude record for a manned balloon flight.
This listing of flight altitude records are the records set for the highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning.
Taber MacCallum is the co-founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective, a human spaceflight company planning to take people and payloads to the edge of space by balloon, and the former chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF). He is co-founder and former CTO of World View Enterprises, a stratospheric balloon company using its un-crewed Stratollite for remote communications and sensing. MacCallum was also a founding member of the Biosphere 2 design team and a crew member from the original two-year mission inside the materially-closed ecological system.
Paragon Space Development Corporation is an American company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. Paragon is a provider of environmental controls for extreme and hazardous environments. They design, build, test and operate life-support systems and leading thermal-control products for astronauts, contaminated water divers, and other extreme environment explorers, as well as for uncrewed space and terrestrial applications.
Similar to skydiving, space diving is the act of jumping from an aircraft or spacecraft in near space and falling towards Earth. The Kármán line is a common definition as to where space begins, 100 km (62 mi) above sea level. This definition is accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which is an international standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics. The United States Air Force uses 50 nautical miles to award astronaut wings.
Michel Fournier is a French adventurer and retired Air Force colonel. He has been involved in planning attempts to break freefall jumping height records, but has yet to be successful in carrying out an attempt. He was born in Treban (Allier), in the Auvergne region of France.
Parachuting and skydiving are methods of descending from a high point in an atmosphere to the ground or ocean surface with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or multiple parachutes.
Red Bull Stratos was a high-altitude skydiving project involving Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner. On 14 October 2012, Baumgartner flew approximately 39 kilometres (24 mi) into the stratosphere over New Mexico, United States, in a helium balloon before free falling in a pressure suit and then parachuting to Earth. The total jump, from leaving the capsule to landing on the ground, lasted approximately ten minutes. While the free fall was initially expected to last between five and six minutes, Baumgartner deployed his parachute after 4 minutes and 19 seconds.
Yevgeny Nikolayevich Andreyev was a colonel in the Soviet Air Force. He set an official record for the longest-distance free-fall parachute jump on 1 November 1962, which the Guinness Book of Records put at 24,500 metres (80,400 ft). The previous record holder for highest free-fall jump was Joseph Kittinger. However, Andreyev did not break the record for highest parachute jump, also held by Kittinger, but that jump was stabilized by a drogue parachute and therefore not free-fall. Andreyev was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for his feat.
Robert Alan Eustace is an American computer scientist who served as Senior Vice President of Engineering and first Senior Vice President for Knowledge at Google until retiring in 2015. On October 24, 2014, he made a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Baumgartner's world record. The jump was from 135,890 feet (41.42 km) and lasted 15 minutes, an altitude record that stands as of 2024. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2015.