Skydiving, Part I: Michel Fournier Breaking the Altitude Record

To see what's at stake here, let's see how The New Yorker's Bilger explains the perils of taking your body to high altitudes:

"Above ten thousand feet, pilots without air tanks begin to suffer hypoxia: their brains get so little oxygen that they start to speak gibberish and make foolish errors. At forty thousand feet, temperatures can drop below negative sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. At fifty thousand feet, any gases trapped in the body expand to more than eight times their volume at sea level, swelling intestines, rupturing lung tissue, and distending the abdomen until it hinders breathing. In 1959, when a Marine lieutenant colonel named William Rankin bailed out of his fighter jet at fifty thousand feet, he barely survived the fall, bleeding from every orifice. Had he stayed at that altitude without an oxygen mask, he would have blacked out within ten seconds and suffered brain damage within minutes."

Of course, it gets worse as you get higher and the key seems to be 63,000 feet, halfway up to Fournier's target height.  At that point, the body's liquid begins to boil.  That is how little air there is up yonder.  So, what kind of equipment will Fournier need for his jump?  How about a glad bag and a pile of chopsticks?  Done!

It starts off with equipment he bought off an aborted French space program.  In 1987, France tried to put their space program on the map by developing a mini-shuttle by the name of Hermes, but the Challenger Shuttle disaster encouraged them to first test a safety system for astronauts: high-altitude sky diving with all the requisite equipment.  The Air Force nominated 68 men to fill the 3 positions to be their testers.  Fournier made the cut to the final three.  The other two were astronauts already in the French space program.

The European Union played a massive trump card, though, when it launched its own space program.  France put their entire Hermes program in a storage bin and Fournier sold his retirement home to buy what he could.  Fournier had his foundation.  The equipment may still look old-school, but Fournier's spent a lot bringing it all into the twenty first century.

Of course, to travel to such heights, Fournier will need a special balloon.  Mylar wouldn't work too well... Instead, Fournier needs a $500,000 weather balloon that stands six-hundred feet tall (183 meters).  It barely looks inflated at ground level, but bulks up as it climbs.  It's something about volume being inversely proportional to pressure and stuff.  (Nerds unite!)  The gondola is twenty years old that is about the size of a telephone booth.  It looks like a giant soda can, painted white, that is pressurized and loaded with G.P.S., cameras and physiological sensors to monitor his mental capacity. 

Monitor his mental capacity?  WHY?  WHA?  Well, as we saw at 10,000 feet, people start losing their mental balance because of lowered oxygen getting to the brain.  Though Fournier has a state-of-the-art suit that took 10 years to develop and a gondola built by the French space agency, things can go wrong very easily.  His suit inflates with oxygen to pressurize his body and permit exposure to the temperature at 132,000 feet, which is, incidentally, 150 degrees below zero.  A small tear in that suit could jeopardize everything.  If the tear happens on the way down, he could freeze to death or suffocate.  If the insulation of the gondola is pierced on the way up (which, incidentally is a two and a half hour ride), he could slowly lose his mind unless he turns on his 20-minute supply of oxygen and gets out of there.  (In fact, sitting in a phone booth for two and a half hours in a space suit might drive someone nuts on its own.)  That's what the monitors are for.  See if he starts acting strangely, like dancing or something, they'd radio him to get out of there.  (One never knows when he's going crazy, now does he?)

Once Fournier reaches his desired point, he will turn on his suit, open the door and leap out.  The atmosphere up there is 0.1% as dense as it is at sea level.  Essentially, he will jump out in a vacuum.  His acceleration will be furious.  Right away a parachute will release that will stabilize his fall.  It will be the first of three parachutes, all that release automatically.  Less than 20,000 feet into the jump, after 40 seconds and with over 110,000 more feet to go, Fournier will break the sound barrier... and only keep accelerating up to 1,000 miles per hour (1,600 km/hr).   The 132,000 foot fall should take about 15 minutes.

You will notice that this poster says Canada, 2007.  That was when Fournier was lining up his big jump after some failed attempts.  The most important factor in the jump is the weather.  The 150 minutes climb up is without control and its course is at the whim of the weather.  A quick gust could tear the balloon or move the cannister from Canada to Greenland.  If there were storms and dense clouds, the trip down could be deadly.  In 2002, Fournier and his team were in Saskatchewan, Canada, ready to jump.  The weather offered a window of opportunity and Fournier got prepared.  He finds out 12 hours out that conditions will be favorable, then he gets himself mentally prepared and watches what he eats; gassy foods are a no-go because they will only expand as he climbs altitude.  He had been visiting a decompression tank in Marseilles, a centrifuge in Moscow and a giant wind machine in Grenoble.  Fournier was ready, and the train was headed out of the station.  Hours before departure, Fournier inserted the anal probe that would monitor his temperature.  He started breathing pure oxygen to get the nitrogen out of his system.  As they were inflating the weather balloon with helium, a gust of wind tore out one of the inflation tubes.  When it was repaired, the favorable weather conditions had slipped away.  The launch had to be postponed a year.

The following August, preparations rolled again.  Weather was co-operating.  The helium pumps were correctly attached and the balloon rose over Fournier in the capsule, which is suspended by a crane.  As the balloon elevated, though, the top shimmered and exploded, falling back to the ground.  Another failure.

Fournier licked his wounds and raised more money to do it again.  The date of 2007 was set.  The posters were made.  Money remained a problem, as you could imagine.  Again, each of those balloons cost $500,000.  His 40-person team and the preparations cost money.  Not only had Fournier sold his retirement home, but he sold all of his (and his wife's) possessions, including a pair of Colt revolvers from the Civil War.  They would go winters without heat.  He and his wife moved in with his lawyer's grandparents where three carbon-coated rooms were made available to them.  Fournier's wife cried when she saw their new accommodations.

Fournier's convinced all the sacrifice will be rewarded.  When the jump is successfully completed, Fournier's convinced NASA will hire him and he will have a schedule of speaking engagements that would make Tony Robbins jealous.  Well, in 2007 the project was back on.  The posters had been made.  Unfortunately, conditions didn't present themselves, and the team pushed back the jump to the end of May 2008.

Yes, Fournier tried again last week.  The weather co-operated.  Fournier was prepared, gasless food and nitrogen-less blood.  The team was in place.  News reporters were there to witness history being made.  If Fournier is successful, he will break four records: fastest free fall, longest free fall, highest altitude for a human balloon flight and highest parachute jump.  Everyone was lined up on the fields of Saskatchewan.  What they saw?  The 600-foot balloon was starting to be filled and everyone watched it float off, alone.  It hadn't been hitched to the capsule.  Failure.

Fournier's set on doing it again, but you wonder how many more times the 64 year old can try?  How much more funding can he find?  We at HAWT will keep our eyes open for you.  Expect updates this fall, hopefully.  Let's see if he will prove that parachutes are a safety option for astronauts.

But it does beg the question: Who holds the record now?  Joe Kittinger.  He did his jump in the 1960's.  Why hasn't someone broken the record since then?  What the heck did Joe go through to get this record with 1960's technology?  What does Kittinger think of Fournier's attempts?  Well, that's part II, of the Skydiving article. 

Check it: Skydiving, Part II: Joe Kittinger Setting the Altitude Record.