You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Doing something that has never been done before in the history of the world.
What Felix Baumgartner did Sunday was rivoting. It was the equivalent of being the first man to step on the moon or Columbus sailing around the world in a ship no bigger than a life raft.
Damn, it’s bigger than that. It’s right up there with man’s ability to harness fire.
Felix Baumgartner stood in his tiny capsule, suspended by balloons more than 100,000 feet in the air, with the dome of forever looming over his head and he simply stepped off into the great wide abyss.
The visual was breath taking. It was scary. it was compelling. He stepped off the platform and just began rocketing away from the camera.
It is the highest sky dive ever. That doesn’t do it justice. It is the first time a human has broken the speed of sound, more than 700 miles an hour, without a jet. That is still under selling this amazing spectacle.
It was sponsored by Red Bull. It should have been sponsored by cocaine and adrenaline.
It was awesome. That’s not even an apt description.
The guy opened the capsule door and the quiet darkness of space spilled in. Suddenly he steps onto the platform and you see how damn small we are.
He is standing 5 miles high over New Mexico. He has a vista on the world, a viewpoint that only a handful of humans have ever had. And nobody has ever said see ya like he did.
It’s one thing to walk in space, tethered to a cable, attached to a ship. It is quite another to step off the front porch and plummet at close to 800 miles an hour toward Earth.
At one point, Baumgartner was spinning out of control. It was touch and go for a few minutes while he worked to stabilize himself.