Cool and very monumental things are happening, you guys! On Friday, Oct. 24, a skydiver named Alan Eustace took a tremendous leap from the sky. His near-space jump from 25 miles above earth (!!!) set an all new record, which is insane and frightening. According to reports, “Eustace fell from an altitude of 135,908 feet and wore a custom pressurized spacesuit built by ILC Dover and parachute to survive the supersonic descent.” That sounds very intricate, and very epic. Probably because it was, indeed, very intricate and very epic.
The video starts with Eustace being lifted into the air by a giant high-altitude balloon filled with helium. Once he’s high enough to see basically an entire surface of earth, we become privy to what Eustace is seeing via a camera located on his helmet. As he gets closer to earth, his fall is slowed down by a parachute and you can see him tumbling into the grass. GREAT SUCCESS. I'm jealous in the that way where I don't actually have any desire at all to do what he's doing, but I'm envious of him doing it. It's like when I see someone with a baby: "Wow, look what you did! How incredible that must feel! And what an accomplishment! And what a totally terrifying thing that I don't want to do, please god, no."
What’s kind of bizarre about this whole thing is the lack of coverage. Remember the Red Bull Stratos mission? That was on everyone’s radar for months, and it kept getting put off because of weather conditions. Eventually, Felix Baumgartner did fall from 128,100 feet from a stratospheric balloon at supersonic speed. Alan Eustace beat him by 7,808 feet, also breaking the sound barrier. These experiments allow the Paragon StratEx team to test out different factors and elements of space exploration so that we can know a little bit more about our stratosphere.
Image: Video From Space/YouTube
