Felix Baumgartner’s 120,000-Foot Space Dive: It's On

When I started I did not have a lot of confidence, of course, because I had never worn a spacesuit, I had never worked with so many people on a project, and I am not a scientist. So it took awhile to adapt myself to the situation. But I did. And I think practicing is key in the whole project. The more your practice, the more confident you are.

Spending a lot of time in the suit is really important, because in the beginning this suit feels like a big handicap. It?s hard to move in the suit . . . it limits your eyesight, especially on the ground. And it gets worse as soon as you?re airborne and you step out of an airplane. [After] all of my past jumps, I felt like this was my first skydive. You?re stiff.

When your parachute opens, the first thing you normally do is you look up and see if it?s open. You cannot look up in that helmet; it?s the reason why we had to put some mirrors on my gloves, so you have to look in your mirror first to see if your parachute is open.

We had to dislocate the [parachute] handles because that suit is sometimes so stiff that you cannot grab the handles on the original place. So just think about it. When you?re in an emergency situation, normally you do what you?re used to doing. And I?ve been skydiving for the past 25 years. And now my handles are in a different place. You have a pull handle for the main parachute, and you have a pull handle for your surf parachute, plus two release handles so just in case the main parachute does not open, you can pull your reserve parachute. So there are a lot of different things you have to manage.

The same thing in the capsule. There are so many buttons [because] you have to maintain a special environment in the capsule. We?re working with [a] two-dozen-foot pressure difference, so there?s a little bit more pressure inside the capsule than outside the capsule. The reason why is that it pushes my door against the seal to make sure the capsule stays pressurized. And on the way up you?re losing outside pressure, and you have to make up for that pressure loss on the way up. So that means you have to release pressure inside the capsule as well. Otherwise it will overpressurize the capsule.

Also, if you exhale, you exhale oxygen through your suit valve into the capsule. You fill up the capsule with oxygen. That means you have more and more oxygen inside the capsule, and if you push a button, there could be a spark that lights a fire. So you stay below 20 percent oxygen inside the capsule all the way up. So those guys will keep me really busy on the way up.

Also, I have to be trained. If [I] lose communication with mission control, I have to run the whole show by myself. . . I?m pretty much flying a gas balloon by myself and therefore had to go to Albuquerque, N.M., to do a gas balloon license.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/safety/felix-baumgartners-120000-foot-space-dive-its-on-6653505?src=rss

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