Google high flyer's record leap from edge of space
October 25, 2014
As well as breaking the sound barrier using only his own acceleration due to gravity, 57-year-old Alan Eustace set several skydiving records with his leap over the southern New Mexico desert on Friday.
Eustace began his dive from an altitude of 135,908 feet (41,424 meters) and remained in freefall for about four-and-a-half minutes. Before opening his chute, he hit a top speed of 1,320 kilometers per hour (822 mph).
Google trumpeted the achievements of its "Senior Vice President of Knowledge" via Twitter.
The jump, which took place above the iconic sci-fi location of Roswell, was part of a project by the Paragon Space Development Corp. and its Stratospheric Explorer team. The group said its experts have been working for years to develop a self-contained commercial spacesuit that would allow individuals to explore some 32 kilometers (20 miles) above the Earth's surface.
"This has opened up endless possibilities for humans to explore previously seldom visited parts of our stratosphere," Grant Anderson, Paragon president and CEO, said in a statement.
According to a statement from the group, Eustace's ascent had taken some two-and-a-half hours, with the executive spending a short time in the stratosphere before making the jump.
"It was amazing. It was beautiful," Eustace told the New York Times after the jump. "You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before."
Observers on the ground were able to hear a sonic boom as Eustace fell, the newspaper reported.
There was little in the way of media fanfare surrounding the attempt, in contrast to the leap from 39,044 meters made by Austrian Felix Baumgartner and the RedBull Stratos team in 2012.
rc/jm (AFP, AP)