Along with more than 3 billion spectators, Art Thompson’s anxiety grew as he intensely watched monitors in a packed control room in New Mexico. Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner was about to leap from a capsule, 128,560 feet (24.5 miles) above the earth’s surface. On Oct. 14, 2012, 50 seconds after stepping off the capsule ledge, Baumgartner broke the sound barrier, reaching speeds of 843.6 miles per hour (Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound). He broke the record for the highest freefall, largest manned balloon (at 30 million cubic feet), and highest balloon flight that Col. Joe Kittinger set on Aug. 16, 1960.
"I'm coming home," Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner said just before stepping off the Red Bull Stratos capsule on Oct. 14, 2012. Art Thompson served as technical project director for Red Bull Stratos. Courtesy of Art Thompson
