39 km Up: The Jump That Broke the Sound Barrier | Red Bull Stratos True Story

Chapter 1The Door Opens at 39 Kilometres

On 14 October 2012, roughly 39 kilometres above New Mexico, the door of a capsule stands open. Inside, a man in a pressure suit is getting ready to jump. His name is Felix Baumgartner. At 12:08 MDT he steps off the ledge. Below him lies a drop of about 39 kilometres, and in front of him, open sky.

Within the first minute, an uncontrollable spin begins, one that could have been deadly. Then, at 3 minutes 40 seconds, Felix tells the radio that his visor is fogging up. He had reported this problem before. How does a person survive a flat spin? What happens if the suit fails? And the biggest question of all: what can happen to a human being while breaking the speed of sound?

This film follows Felix's life, the idea behind the mission, and the legal fight that nearly stopped it. It then turns to Joseph Kittinger's earlier jump, followed by the pressure suit, the test jumps, the ascent, and finally the four minutes in which a speed of 1,357.64 km/h was recorded. But first, the story begins before the door opened. How did this man end up here?

Chapter 2A Daredevil From Salzburg

Felix Baumgartner was born on 20 April 1969 in Salzburg, Austria. His mother was named Eva, and he had a younger brother, Gerard. As a child he dreamed of flying and skydiving, and those dreams went on to shape his whole life. He served in the Austrian military, where he trained in parachute jumping, including practice landings on small target zones. Interestingly, in 1992 he also fought one professional boxing match. It was in the welterweight class, it was his first and last fight, and he won.

Then came 1999. By jumping from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he set the world record for the highest parachute jump from a building. On 20 July 2003 he became the first person to skydive across the English Channel, using a special carbon fiber wing. That wing was not free of controversy, though. Alban Geissler, one of the people who developed the SKYRAY wing, said he believed Felix's wing was a copy of two prototype SKYRAY wings sold to Red Bull two years earlier.

From the hand of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Felix made a 29-metre jump, described as the lowest BASE jump on record. Here too there was a dispute. Some BASE jumpers said Felix had passed off the height of the statue as the height of the jump, although he actually landed on a slope below the statue's feet. According to them, other jumpers had jumped from there before but stayed away from publicity.

On 27 June 2004 he became the first person to BASE jump from the completed Millau Viaduct in France. On 18 August 2006, in Malmö, Sweden, he first skydived onto the Turning Torso building and landed on it, then BASE jumped from the same spot. On 12 December 2007 he made an unauthorised BASE jump from the 91st-floor observation deck of Taipei 101, then the tallest completed building in the world. After that, Felix was banned from re-entering Taiwan. Because of his extremely dangerous stunts, he was famous across the world.

So the question was this: could someone who jumped from buildings and bridges also jump from the edge of the stratosphere? The answer began to emerge in January 2010.

Chapter 3The Idea, the Lawsuit and the Sponsor

In January 2010, New Scientist reported that Felix was working on a plan with a team of scientists and the sponsor Red Bull GmbH. The goal was to make the highest skydive in history, with the help of a helium balloon. It was no easy task. Carrying a person to the stratosphere would need a special capsule and a very large balloon. The project was called Red Bull Stratos, also known as Red Bull Space Jump, a high-altitude skydiving project. It was not just a stunt. Behind it stood a sponsor, scientists and a whole team.

The plan was for Felix to jump from 36,600 metres, or 120,100 feet, from a capsule hanging beneath a helium-filled balloon. His aim was to become the first parachutist to break the sound barrier in freefall alone, without any engine. How could that be possible? In normal conditions, a freefalling skydiver reaches a terminal velocity of about 320 km/h, or 90 metres per second. The secret lay in the altitude. The air up high is very thin, so drag is lower and a falling person can reach a much higher speed.

But a court case got in the way of the dream. In April, Daniel Hogan filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles. Hogan claimed that he had conceived the idea of jumping from the edge of space by parachute in 2004, and that Red Bull had stolen it. On 12 October 2010, Red Bull announced that the whole project was being put on hold. The dream had suddenly crashed back to earth.

Would the case drag on? Would Felix's preparations stop for good? The answer came in June 2011, when the case was settled out of court. Then, on 5 February 2012, news came that the project would be restarted. A pause of about sixteen months was over.

By then, the record still belonged to Joseph Kittinger, who had jumped from 31,300 metres in 1960. Felix had to go well above that. And behind that record lies a long history of both successes and tragedies. In the next section, we go there.

Chapter 4The Man Who Fell First: Kittinger and Excelsior

The story of space diving began long before Felix. In the Second World War, flying above 40,000 feet had become common. From 1943, the US Air Force was researching how to save crews if an aircraft failed at such heights. After the war, even higher-flying aircraft were built. Then came Project High Dive, in which the Air Force dropped human-like dummies from extreme altitude. They went into violent spins, caused by the low air density. The Air Force learned that such a spin was not survivable for a human. This result, together with the Space Race, opened the way for Project Excelsior, a name meaning 'ever upward' that was given by Colonel Stapp.

In this project, Joseph Kittinger made three extreme-altitude jumps from the open gondola of a helium balloon. The first was on 16 November 1959, from about 76,400 feet. His equipment failed and Kittinger lost consciousness, and the automatic parachute opener saved his life. He went into a flat spin of about 120 rpm, and the g-forces on his hands and feet were estimated at more than 22 times gravity. The second jump was on 11 December 1959, from about 74,700 feet. In these jumps he fell on his back in a rocking-chair position, not face-down. The reason was the 60 lb kit and the shape of the pressure suit, which inflated and settled by itself into a seated shape, like a cockpit seat.

Then came Excelsior III on 16 August 1960. Kittinger reached 102,800 feet, or 31,300 metres, and jumped with a small drogue parachute. He fell for 4 minutes 36 seconds, reaching a top speed of 614 miles per hour, or 988 km/h. He opened his parachute at 18,000 feet. A military citation gives the time as 4 minutes 38 seconds, so the sources differ by two seconds. Kittinger later said it was impossible to visualise such speed. There is no signpost and no depth perception, only the sound of your own breathing inside the helmet. His records were USAF records and were not submitted to the FAI as world aerospace records, but they stood for 52 years.

The Soviet Air Force was running a similar project. On 1 November 1962, Yevgeni Andreyev jumped from 83,523 feet and opened his parachute after 80,380 feet of freefall. Pyotr Dolgov was testing an experimental pressure suit. As he left the gondola, his helmet struck it, the suit lost pressure, and he died.

Then there is Nick Piantanida, a civilian amateur parachutist. In 1965 he asked Kittinger for help, because he wanted to break both Kittinger's and Andreyev's records. Kittinger refused, believing the approach was too reckless. In 1966, Piantanida died in the Strato Jump III accident.

This same Kittinger became the mentor of Red Bull Stratos in 2012. At 84, he sat in mission control as capsule communicator, or CAPCOM. His own 53-year-old record was about to fall, and he was guiding the very man who would break it. But was it even possible to stay alive in such a place?

Chapter 5Engineering Survival: The Pressure Suit and the Fear Inside It

Kittinger's story raises a question: how does a human survive at such an altitude? The answer is the pressure suit. Above about 15,000 metres, breathing becomes impossible, because the pressure at which the lungs release carbon dioxide becomes higher than the pressure of the outside air. Above 19,000 metres, known as the Armstrong limit, the fluids in the throat and lungs begin to boil. Felix's jump was from about 39,000 metres, so a pressure suit was essential.

There are two kinds. A partial pressure suit applies pressure to parts of the body and offers protection only up to a point. A full pressure suit creates pressure around the whole body and has no altitude limit. Many such suits create an envelope of gas around the body. The problem is that when joints bend, the gas volume changes and the wearer tires, so constant-volume folds are built into the joints. Another method is direct compression, in which the suit fabric presses directly on the body. In a capstan suit, an inflatable tube does this job.

In 1934, Wiley Post and Russell Colley of B.F. Goodrich built the world's first practical pressure suit. That same year, Post flew over Chicago up to 40,000 feet. During the Second World War, Goodrich stayed ahead, but no fully mobile suit was made. David Clark's Model 4 was first flown in 1953. NASA modified Goodrich's Mk IV and used it in Project Mercury, while David Clark's XMC-2 suits are considered the first US spacesuits.

But building the suit was only half the battle. When Felix first spent time in a pressurised suit, he began to suffer from claustrophobia, an intense fear of enclosed spaces. What was the answer? Help from a sports psychologist and other specialists, through which Felix overcame it. To track his physical response, he wore an Equivital LifeMonitor, which let researchers monitor his physiological response in an extreme environment.

The capsule that Felix would ride up in was numbered N502FB, and a helium balloon would lift it. Another question was what would happen if the spin became uncontrollable. Felix had an abort switch that would open the drogue parachute and stop the spin. The price was that once the drogue opened, he could not break any speed record. If the switch was used, the record would be lost.

So what was it all for? Jonathan Clark, the mission's medical director, said they would set new standards for aviation. No one had previously reached the speed of sound without an aircraft. The biggest question was what effect breaking the sound barrier would have on the body. The project aimed to collect data for high-altitude parachute systems, along with new ideas for emergency evacuation and for the safety of future space professionals and space tourists.

So the suit, the capsule and the monitoring system were ready. Now it was time for rehearsal. In the next section we see what happened in the test jumps.

Chapter 6Test Jumps and Aborted Launch

The first test jump took place on 15 March 2012, from 21,818 metres. Felix was in freefall for about 3 minutes 43 seconds. He claimed his speed exceeded 580 km/h. Then the parachute opened, and the whole jump lasted about 8 minutes 8 seconds. With this jump Felix became only the third person to parachute safely from above 21.7 kilometres. It was a big step, but the real jump was still far away.

The second test jump was on 25 July 2012, this time from 29,460 metres. Reaching that height took Felix about 90 minutes. Freefall was estimated at 3 minutes 48 seconds, then the parachutes opened and Felix landed safely near Roswell, New Mexico. It was his personal best. Sources give 29,460 metres as both 96,640 feet and 96,650 feet, a trivial difference of ten feet. Remember that Kittinger had jumped from 31,300 metres in 1960. The second test came close to that height, but about 1,840 metres short. According to Brian Utley, the official observer on site, his top speed was about 863 km/h. Joseph Kittinger had by now joined the mission as an advisor. Only the main jump remained.

The real launch was set for the morning of 9 October 2012, but the weather caused a delay of five hours. During that time, technicians found a fault in one of the capsule's communication radios, another problem delaying launch day. Then at 11:42 MDT the launch was aborted, because a sharp gust of 40 km/h, about 25 mph, blew across the launch site. That day the morning launch was five hours late, then a radio fault was found, and finally the gust decided it.

What now? The team rescheduled the launch for the morning of 11 October. But the project's meteorologist announced that launch would not be possible on that date either. Once again, they had to wait. Remember that the jump planned in 2010 was from 36,600 metres. The real jump turned out to be even higher. Compared with the test jumps, the main jump was to be from about 39 kilometres, roughly 9.5 kilometres above the second test.

At last the launch happened on 14 October 2012, and the weather was clear that day. Was Felix's greatest test about to begin?

Chapter 7Ascent: Visor Heater and the Long Climb

On the morning of 14 October 2012, everything was ready at Roswell International Air Center. The capsule launched at 09:30 MDT, which is 15:30 UTC. The day was not easy, but the weather was perfectly clear. The wind was blowing from the southeast at only 5.5 kilometres per hour, and the ground temperature was 14 degrees Celsius. There was an interesting coincidence too: the date was the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 flight.

The balloon slowly began to rise. Felix's climb would take about two and a half hours, ending with the capsule at about 38 kilometres. To keep the rate of ascent under control, a balloon valve was used to release small amounts of gas. Then a problem appeared. As soon as they passed the Armstrong limit, about 19,000 metres, Felix reported that his visor heater was not working properly. Think about it: at that height the air pressure is so low that breathing is impossible without a protective suit, and the problem was in the visor of that very suit.

Mission Control kept the mission going. About 40 minutes later it was announced that the jump would continue despite the reported problem. The Mission Control team was in constant contact. Kittinger was CAPCOM, the capsule communicator, and was speaking directly to Felix by radio. But an abort had also been considered. In that method, helium would be released from the balloon so that the capsule came down, which meant the whole mission could end. One small heater problem could have stopped everything. But the decision was to go ahead.

After about two and a half hours of climbing, the egress procedure began, the stage in which Felix is prepared to leave the capsule. First the capsule was depressurised. Then Felix's umbilical air supplies were disconnected, and the capsule's interior was set up for the exit. During the final checks, Kittinger said to Felix: "OK, we're getting serious now, Felix." It was the voice of a man who had himself jumped from 102,800 feet in 1960.

Fifteen minutes after the checks began, pressure was stabilised and the door opened. One of the last tasks was for Felix to turn on his suit cameras. Ahead was the open door, and below, a drop of about 39 kilometres. Would the visor problem become a danger later? The next few minutes would tell.

Chapter 8The Fall: Spin, Speed and the Sound Barrier

At 12:08 MDT, Felix leapt forward from the ledge. One timeline also gives the time as about 12:07, a minor difference of a minute. Normally a skydiver's terminal velocity is about 320 kilometres per hour, but at this height the air is thin, so drag is lower. Just 42 seconds later Felix reached his maximum speed. An unverified estimate was 1,342 kilometres per hour. The later confirmed speed was 1,357.64 kilometres per hour, or Mach 1.25. At about 30,000 metres, Felix passed the speed of sound.

But a great danger began at the same time. Within the first minute, an uncontrolled spin started, and it could have proved deadly. Recall that Kittinger's flat spin in Excelsior I reached 120 rpm, and that the Project High Dive dummies also went into violent spins. Felix had an abort switch. Pressing it would open the drogue parachute and stop the spin, but then no speed record would be possible. Felix did not use the switch. At 01:23 he recovered, and stability returned.

At the later press conference he described the experience as being like swimming without feeling the water, because there was no sensation of air. That made it hard to judge his orientation. After his 1960 jumps, Kittinger had said much the same thing, that speed cannot be felt. At 03:40, Felix told Mission Control that his visor was fogging up. This was the same old heater worry.

At 04:16 Felix opened his parachute, and at about 4:20 the freefall ended. The sources differ by a few seconds, but the freefall is taken to be 4 minutes 19 seconds. That was 17 seconds short of Kittinger's 4 minutes 36 seconds. According to the sources, he could have fallen safely another 20 seconds, but it was hard to know the exact altitude.

After the parachute opened, about 5 minutes of controlled flight remained. By the timeline, the parachute opened at about 2,500 metres, roughly 1,500 metres above the ground. At 12:17 MDT, about 9 minutes later, Felix landed on his feet in eastern New Mexico. One source puts the whole jump at about 10 minutes. On reaching the ground, he knelt and raised a fist in the air. Ground crews met him, and a helicopter was sent to take him to the Roswell base.

According to YouTube, more than 9.5 million users watched the jump live, a record for the most concurrent views of a live stream. The capsule came down on its own parachute and landed about 70.5 kilometres east of Felix's landing spot. The balloon was made for a single use.

So an uncontrolled spin, a fogging visor and a speed faster than sound had all been survived. But were these records officially recognised?

Chapter 9Records, Doubts and What Changed

On 22 February 2013, the FAI announced that Felix had broken three of the four planned records. The first was exit altitude, 38.9694 kilometres. The second was maximum vertical speed without a drogue, 1,357.6 kilometres per hour. The third was freefall distance, 36,402.6 metres. The fourth record, freefall duration, did not fall, because the parachute opened earlier than scheduled and Kittinger's 4 minutes 36 seconds stood. Felix also broke Nick Piantanida's unofficial balloon record of 37,640 metres, and he became the first person to break the speed of sound without an engine.

That altitude did not stay a record for long. On 24 October 2014, Alan Eustace jumped from about 41.42 kilometres and broke Felix's altitude record.

Then there is the criticism. The jump was called the edge of space, but the FAI's Karman line is at 100 kilometres, about three times higher than this altitude. The FAA and NASA put the boundary of space at 80 kilometres. So Felix's jump was in the stratosphere, not in space. The real value of the mission was in the data. It helped in the development of high-altitude parachute systems and produced new ideas for emergency evacuation from spacecraft-like vehicles.

In 2014, Felix was seen driving an Audi R8 LMS with Audi Motorsport in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring, and his team finished ninth overall. On 17 July 2025, Felix died in a powered paragliding accident in Porto Sant'Elpidio, Italy, at the age of 56. The investigation report named human error as the cause. According to the report, the paraglider was in good condition, and the autopsy also ruled out a heart attack. Kittinger passed away on 9 December 2022 at the age of 94.

So what is the lesson of this story? One man, one suit and one team showed how important preparation and communication are when the risk is great. One question remains open: when will a space dive from above 100 kilometres happen? So far, no successful space dive has been made. If you liked the video, like, share and subscribe, and tell us in the comments: what is the biggest challenge of a jump like this?