Joseph Kittinger & Felix Baumgartner High Altitude Free Fall

• published: 15 Dec 2015
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In the 50's, Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger set the record for the highest balloon ascent, and the longest sky dive. In 2012 those records were broken. Joseph William Kittinger II (born July 27, 1928) is a retired Colonel in the United States Air Force and a USAF Command Pilot. Following his initial operational assignment in fighter aircraft, he participated in Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior in 1960, setting a world record for the longest skydive from a height greater than 31 kilometres (19 mi). He was also the first man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon.Serving as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, he achieved an aerial kill of a North Vietnamese MiG-21 jet fighter and was later shot down himself, spending 11 months as a prisoner of war in a North Vietnamese prison. In 2012, at the age of 84, he participated in the Red Bull Stratos project as capsule communicator, directing Felix Baumgartner on his record-breaking 39-kilometer (24 mi) freefall from Earth's stratosphere, exceeding Kittinger's earlier freefall in 1960. Felix Baumgartner born 20 April 1969 is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper. He set world records for skydiving an estimated 39 km (24 mi), reaching an estimated speed of 1,357.64 km/h (843.6 mph), or Mach 1.25, on 14 October 2012, and became the first person to break the sound barrier without vehicular power relative to the surface on his descent. He broke skydiving records for exit altitude, vertical freefall distance without drogue, and vertical speed without drogue. Though he still holds the latter records, the first was broken two years later, when on 24 October 2014, Alan Eustace jumped from 135,890 feet - or, 41.42 km (25.74 mi) with a drogue. Baumgartner is also renowned for the particularly dangerous nature of the stunts he has performed during his career. Baumgartner spent time in the Austrian military where he practiced parachute jumping, including training to land on small target zones. Baumgartner's most recent project was Red Bull Stratos, in which he jumped to Earth from a helium balloon in the stratosphere on 14 October 2012. As part of this project, he set the maximum vertical speed without drogue, highest exit altitude for a parachutist, and greatest vertical distance of free-fall