Daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s Epic Space Dive Will Leave You Speechless
Felix Baumgartner’s 2012 space dive is going viral on Reddit once again. The Austrian daredevil did the unthinkable when he pursued his goal of becoming the first human to break the sound barrier outside of an aircraft. How exactly did he do that? It’s something similar to sky-diving, but slightly more extreme—space diving. The now 55-year-old had his sights set on this feat for quite some time, and it wasn’t something that took minimal preparation. Baumgartner put six years of dedication and work into accomplishing this dive. Felix Baumgartner’s space dive captivated millions when it happened live in 2012, and the viral video is reigniting excitement today.
“The first 25 seconds, it looked like everything is under control. And after 34 seconds, I hit Mach 1 and I broke the speed of sound,” Baumgartner explained in the video, originally shared by Red Bull.
In the viral video, Baumgartner explains that while there were some things he was able to prepare for ahead of this dive, some of the experience was unpredictable—particularly, the spinning he endured.
“Because of the fact that a lot of those scientists said prior to the jump, ‘You’re gonna spin like crazy,’ and the other half said, ‘We don’t think anything is gonna happen,’ I was mentally prepared to spin, but I was hoping that I was not going to spin,” he said of the uncertainty. When his body ultimately began spinning, the lack of protocol regarding the way to deal with such an occurrence set the stakes even higher.
“At that moment, it’s not about breaking records anymore. At that moment, it’s all about survival,” he said. Thanks to a g-whiz that was attached to him, a device that fires a drogue parachute, he was able to come out of the flat spin and stabilize.
“Once I opened my parachute and opened my visor, this was the first moment after seven hours where I was breathing outside air,” he told CNN. “I was reconnected to the outside world, and that was a very happy moment.”
The free fall was 119,431 feet, and he parachuted the remaining 8,421. Despite that particular record since being broken, he will always hold the title of being the first human to break the sound barrier outside of an aircraft, and even though this feat took place over a decade ago, the recirculation of this video is still leaving people in awe.
“Bonkers stuff!,” said one Reddit user in the comments. “I stayed up all night to watch this live when it happened, and then it was canceled due to weather conditions. So I stayed up again the following night and it went ahead. It was awesome seeing somebody break the sound barrier with their head,” shared another.
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