Results tagged “skydiving” from HAWT action [hot ak-shuhn]

Skydiving, Part II: Joe Kittinger Setting the Altitude Record

By John de Guzman on June 13, 2008 12:00 PM | | Comments (5) | | | |
The first part of this Skydiving series (Skydiving, Part I: Michel Fournier Breaking the Altitude Record) followed Michel Fournier's attempt to break the skydiving record.  Fournier's aiming for a 25 mile jump, and he's been trying to make this jump, unsuccessfully, for over 7 years now.  He's raised over $20 million to fund the jump attempts.  I wonder, with Fournier's obsession being so intense and his attempts such disasters, who holds the record?  What's his story?  Did he have $20 million?  Did it take him 8 years?  How long ago was his jump?  Answers?  They arrive.

483px-Joseph_Kittinger.jpgThat's Colonel Joseph Kittinger.  A Florida boy who took to the Air Force, serving in Vietnam and retiring with 37 medals, including 2 Purple Hearts, a Meritorious and a Prisoner of War medal.  Essentially, he's a bad ass.  His Air Force career took him to a special project, called Project Excelsior, that aimed to build a safe, controlled descent for a pilot and crew at high altitudes.  The best way to test the system?  First, they threw dummies out of planes and watched, with horror, as they spun in circles at incredible speeds.  Once that was successfully noted how dangerous it could be, they got a bad ass to climb into an open-air gondola, tossed a helium balloon on it and asked him to jump out.

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Skydiving, Part I: Michel Fournier Breaking the Altitude Record

By John de Guzman on June 4, 2008 11:00 AM | | Comments (4) | | | |
Michel Fournier is kind of like that other French guy, David Belle, who dares to take a simple idea and stretch it to a degree of sassiness that is just unprecedented.  Like Belle, who took leaping through urban landscapes to a level that has left its mark on popular culture as parkour, Michel Fournier aims to take sky diving to the extreme.  The standard parachuting dive occurs around 11,000 feet up (3,350 meters).  Michael Fournier aims to jump from 132,000 feet up (40,000 meters).  Yes, he aims to take sky diving from 2 up to 25 miles.

fournier_fall.jpgI recalled a profile in The New Yorker about Michel from last August.  I had to pull some strings to get my hands on the article, and Burkhard Bilger's work is just as sassy as I remember.  Of course, jumping from 25 miles up takes a hell of a lot of planning.  It takes special equipment, and a lot of it.  Fournier's retired from the French Air Army (don't laugh, they have one), and he's not loaded.  No, he's raised almost $20 million to fund his jump.  What did it get him?  What does it take to jump from that height?  Will he ever successfully complete the jump and set the world record?

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Continue reading Skydiving, Part I: Michel Fournier Breaking the Altitude Record.

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