Hop Inside the Red Bull Stratos Space-Jump Capsule

Today, weather permitting, daredevil Felix Baumgartner will attempt a 60,000-foot-high dry run of a world-record-breaking space jump planned for this summer. The Austrian BASE jumper will don a spacesuit and ride a 60-story-tall balloon above Roswell, N.M. When he reaches 60,000 feet, he?ll jump out and hope for the best.

The stunt is the first of two tests for Baumgartner before he attempts the space dive from 120,000 feet this summer. During that fall, Baumgartner could reach supersonic speeds in the whisper-thin reaches of the upper atmosphere. That ascent should take about 3 hours, but Baumgartner?s pressurized spacesuit can carry only enough oxygen to survive about five and a half minutes of free fall. To kiss the edge of space, Baumgartner will have to hunker down inside a pressurized capsule.

"There are so many buttons [because] you have to maintain a special environment in the capsule," Baumgartner told Popular Mechanics last month. "You don?t hear anything from the outside; you?re totally by yourself. The only thing that you can hear [is your mind]."

Many of the 40 engineers, scientists and aviators on the Red Bull Stratos team contributed ideas and sweat to craft the high-tech gondola. One of them was Joseph Kittinger, the current record holder of the highest skydive (from 102,800 feet up, on Aug. 16, 1960). "I like to see steps forward. I like to see progress being made and be part of research into unknowns," Kittinger said in February. "I want to contribute, and I?m delighted to be part of this."

Take a claustrophobic tour of the Stratos space-jump capsule.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/news/hop-inside-the-red-bull-stratos-high-tech-space-jump-capsule-7284912?src=rss

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