Faster than the speed of sound

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/faster-than-the-speed-of-sound-the-man-who-falls-to-earth-1877875.html

Faster than the speed of sound: the man who falls to earth
Daredevil Felix Baumgartner, who made the first unpowered flight across the English Channel in 2003, now plans to skydive from the edge of space. Tony Paterson reports
Monday, 25 January 2010

He is about as close as it is humanly possible to get to being a real life Batman and he does it without resorting to capes, masks or the assistance of a Boy Wonder. Instead he uses spies, disguises, sponsorship and a hefty supply of nerve to achieve his near-legendary reputation.

For years, Felix Baumgartner has taken to the skies in a way most of us can only hope to emulate in an aeroplane. From skydiving to base-jumping, his endeavours have thrilled onlookers and frequently enraged the authorities. But like most extreme athletes, Baumgartner has always been on the lookout for the ultimate rush - and now, it appears, he has found it.

His goal, which he hopes to achieve this year, is to make the highest ever parachute jump. It will be from well into the stratosphere. It will mean breaking the speed of sound. And, if it succeeds, it will break a record that has stood for 50 years.

Several others have attempted to break that long-standing record, which has stood for decades as marks for other altitude extremes have tumbled. The most recent attempt was made in 2008, by a former French paratrooper, Michel Fournier, who spent years preparing only to have the balloon that was set to take him up break from its moorings and float away.

Luckily, Baumgartner has a former US Airforce colonel, Joe Kittinger, to guide him. And Kittinger is not just any air force colonel. For it was he who leapt from a gondola attached to a high altitude balloon in 1960 to fall from a height of 19.5 miles. He is the only man who can advise the challenger from experience. "He was my childhood hero," Baumgartner says.

The Austrian adventurer has come a long way from the boy who worshipped his Vietnam-veteran predecessor. Now Baumgartner is occasionally known as the "God of the Skies". His more prosaic nickname is 'Fearless Felix". He is best known in Britain for his extraordinary feat of July seven years ago, when he skydived over the English Channel starting thousands of feet above Dover and flew without any external propulsion across to Calais.

Baumgartner did it by jumping out of the back of a so-called "skyvan", a fixed wing aircraft, at 32,000 feet with a 6-foot span carbon wing and oxygen bottles strapped to his back. He flew the 22 miles to Calais in a mixture of free fall and gliding, reaching a top speed of over 200 mph. He finally opened his parachute at 4,000 feet, and floated gently down to the grassy cliff top of Cap Blanc Nez some seven minutes later.

The 40- year-old Austrian extreme sportsman pulled off the stunt 94 years after Luis Bleriot's first powered flight across the Channel, and his account of his experience was almost poetic: "While I was still at a high altitude, I flew into my own shadow, which the morning sun was casting on to a cloud together with a rainbow . I don't think anyone has experienced that before," Baumgartner said.

Yet his Channel crossing was a comparatively simple undertaking, mainly because it had the approval of the authorities on both sides. It required no resorting to SAS-style covert activities. Baumgartner's habit of base-jumping – the highly dangerous business of throwing oneself off high buildings – is his stock in trade, and the authorities in most countries do their best to stop him.

Some say that his most dangerous feat was a leap from the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio De Janeiro – a relatively small structure, but all the riskier as a result. But Baumgartner says he conquered his base jump Everest in December 2007, when he chucked himself off the 1,280 foot high Taipei 101 Tower - the highest building in the world until earlier this month. His free fall lasted five seconds before his parachute flew open. "I've finally fulfilled a dream," he exclaimed.

He had attempted to jump off the building on three previous occasions but had been caught each time by Taipei security guards. He eventually had to use spies to case the building in advance. They noted the positions of security cameras, smuggled in his parachute and hid it the ceiling of a top floor lavatory. Baumgartner dressed in several different disguises in order to inspect the building unnoticed before making his jump. Eight years beforehand he jumped off the 1,242 foot high Petronas twin tower complex in Kuala Lumpur, which was then the world's highest building. Batman eat your heart out.

Still, even those feats would pale in comparison to the altitude record that Baumgartner now hopes to set. His collaboration with Kittinger is a throwback to an era before the first American sub-orbital space trip and in the midst of the cold war, when the goal was to provide data on the effect of high-altitude bailouts from aircraft. Then, as now, the risks were considerable. A pressurised glove failed on the ascent and his hand swelled up to twice its usual size. But Kittinger decided to go ahead with the jump anyway, falling at 614 mph, slowed only slightly by his drogue parachute.

His previous jump, a year earlier, nearly killed him. Falling out of another gondola at 76,400 feet in November 1959, Kittinger's equipment failed and caused him to lose consciousness. His body went into a terrifying flat spin that caused him to rotate like a propeller blade, turning at a speed of 120 mph. The G forces on parts of his body were calculated to be a staggering 22 times the force of gravity. Fortunately the automatic parachute opener in his equipment functioned properly. It saved his life. So is Baumgartner scared? "Of course," he says. "I always use fear to my advantage, for focus."

The attempt is planned for an as-yet unnamed location in North America. Dressed in a specially modified full pressure suit and helmet, he will ascend to the stratosphere in a pressurised capsule attached to a 450-foot high helium filled balloon. He then intends to jump out at an altitude he hopes will exceed 120,000 feet, or nearly 23 miles, and make a descent lasting over five minutes. Scientists say he will almost certainly break the sound barrier during his free fall and become the first human to do so without the aid of a machine.

Baumgartner views his forthcoming attempt with a mixture of excitement and adrenalin-fuelled apprehension. "No one really knows what that will be like," he says. "The fact is that you have a lot of different air flows coming around your body. Some parts of you body are in supersonic flow and some parts are in transonic flow. What kind of reaction that creates, I can't tell you." Baumgartners' backers, the Austrian Red Bull energy drink firm, say that if all goes well, he should break the speed of sound some 35 seconds into his descent.

Colonel Kittinger, who is one of the few people to have experienced such high altitude free fall is quite clear about what the project entails. "It is extremely hostile up there and the further you fall, the friendlier it becomes," he said.

The main challenge facing Baumgartner will be to stop his body going into the kind of consciousness-robbing flat spin that Kittinger experienced. Most scientists say it is almost impossible to pull out of a spin once it gains momentum. As a result Baumgartner, like his predecessor, will be equipped with a device which will open his parachute automatically should he black out.

Yet his jump is also an attempt to further space exploration. Baumgartner says it will help to make it possible to bring astronauts back to Earth alive, should their space capsules malfunction on entering the stratosphere. "We want to prove that astronauts can make it safely back to Earth, if they are forced to bail out at 120,000 feet," he said.

Yet Baumgartner may find that he has got more than a 120,000-foot free fall and the threat of flat spins to contend with during his record breaking attempt. Michel Fournier has also pledged to have a go at beating Kittinger's record in 2010, if he secures the right funding. A race for the sky could be on.

Iconic daredevil Evel Knievel dies at 69

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obit_knievel

Iconic daredevil Evel Knievel dies at 69
By MITCH STACY, Associated Press Writer
11-30-7

Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills. He also suffered two strokes in recent years.

Longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundle said Knievel had trouble breathing at his Clearwater condominium and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.

"It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it. Superman just doesn't die, right?" Rundle said.

Immortalized in the Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.

"I think he lived 20 years longer than most people would have" after so many injuries, said his son Kelly Knievel, 47. "I think he willed himself into an extra five or six years."

Though Knievel dropped off the pop culture radar in the '80s, the image of the high-flying motorcyclist clad in patriotic, star-studded colors was never erased from public consciousness. He always had fans and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel's trademarked image in a popular West music video.

Knievel made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Mont., every year as his legend was celebrated during the "Evel Knievel Days" festival, which Rundle organizes.

"They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives," Knievel said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."

For the tall, thin daredevil, the limelight was always comfortable, the gab glib. To Knievel, there always were mountains to climb, feats to conquer.

"No king or prince has lived a better life," he said in a May 2006 interview with The Associated Press. "You're looking at a guy who's really done it all. And there are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved."

He had a knack for outrageous yarns: "Made $60 million, spent 61. ...Lost $250,000 at blackjack once. ... Had $3 million in the bank, though."

He began his daredevil career in 1965 when he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils, a touring show in which he performed stunts such as riding through fire walls, jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions and being towed at 200 mph behind dragster race cars.

In 1966 he began touring alone, barnstorming the West and doing everything from driving the trucks, erecting the ramps and promoting the shows. In the beginning he charged $500 for a jump over two cars parked between ramps.

He steadily increased the length of the jumps until, on New Year's Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 151 feet across the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace. He cleared the fountains but the crash landing put him in the hospital in a coma for a month.

His son, Robbie, successfully completed the same jump in April 1989.

In the years after the Caesar's crash, the fee for Evel's performances increased to $1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London — the crash landing broke his pelvis — to more than $6 million for the Sept. 8, 1974, attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a rocket-powered "Skycycle." The money came from ticket sales, paid sponsors and ABC's "Wide World of Sports."

The parachute malfunctioned and deployed after takeoff. Strong winds blew the cycle into the canyon, landing him close to the swirling river below.

On Oct. 25, 1975, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at Kings Island in Ohio.

Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 in which he was again seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater. He continued to do smaller exhibitions around the country with his son, Robbie.

Many of his records have been broken by daredevil motorcyclist Bubba Blackwell.

Knievel also dabbled in movies and TV, starring as himself in "Viva Knievel" and with Lindsay Wagner in an episode of the 1980s TV series "Bionic Woman." George Hamilton and Sam Elliott each played Knievel in movies about his life.

Evel Knievel toys accounted for more than $300 million in sales for Ideal and other companies in the 1970s and '80s.

Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte on Oct. 17, 1938, Knievel was raised by his grandparents. He traced his career choice back to the time he saw Joey Chitwood's Auto Daredevil Show at age 8.

"The phrase one-of-a-kind is often used, but it probably applies best to Bobby Knievel," said former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., Knievel's cousin. "He was an amazing athlete... He was sharp as a tack, one of the smartest people I've ever known and finally, as the world knows, no one had more guts than Bobby. He was simply unafraid of anything."

"He was no dummy," said high school classmate Sonny Holland, the former Montana State football star and coach. "I'll never forget a poem that he made up when we were seniors about his friends and the people he hung out with. It was incredible. Everybody was just astounded when he recited it in front of the whole school."

Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, Knievel went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.

He also formed the Butte Bombers semiprofessional hockey team, acting as owner, manager, coach and player.

Knievel also worked in the Montana copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships. As a motorcycle dealer, he drummed up business by offering $100 off the price of a motorcycle to customers who could beat him at arm wrestling.

At various times and in different interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker, a holdup man.

Evel Knievel married hometown girlfriend, Linda Joan Bork, in 1959. They separated in the early 1990s. They had four children, Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia.

Robbie Knievel followed in his father's footsteps as a daredevil, jumping a moving locomotive in a 200-foot, ramp-to-ramp motorcycle stunt on live television in 2000. He also jumped a 200-foot-wide chasm of the Grand Canyon.

Knievel lived with his longtime partner, Krystal Kennedy-Knievel, splitting his time between their Clearwater condo and Butte. They married in 1999 and divorced a few years later but remained together. Knievel had 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.