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'Time To Move On' For Austrian Daredevil Felix Baumgartner

2012-10-23 203 Dailymotion

<p>The Austrian daredevil who leapt into the stratosphere from a balloon near the edge of space 24 miles above Earth early this month is looking forward to a career as a helicopter pilot.<br /><br />"I think it's time to move on," Felix Baumgartner told Reuters on Tuesday (October 23).<br /><br />"The next couple months, years I'm going to work -- I want to work -- as a helicopter pilot," the 43-year-old explained. "I always had two dreams when I was a little kid. The first dream was becoming a skydiver, which I did when I was 16. The second dream was becoming a helicopter pilot, but I could never afford to take the expensive lessons. So in 2006, I did my helicopter license. I'm a commercial helicopter pilot right now and I'm working on my skills."<br /><br />Baumgartner set a record for the highest skydive and broke the sound barrier in the process on October 14th when he jumped from a skateboard-sized shelf, carried higher than 128,000 feet (39,045 meters) by an enormous balloon from a launch site in Roswell, New Mexico.<br /><br />M ore than 8 million people watched his feat online as his body pierced the atmosphere at 833.9 miles per hour (1342km/h), according to preliminary numbers released by the project team.<br /><br />"I had been told that there was going to be a shockwave going through your suit. I never felt it. I never saw it. And that supersonic boom that you create happens way behind you. So, when I opened my parachute I was still not sure did I break the speed of sound or not? But when I land, people on the ground, they heard that supersonic boom and there I knew, I broke the speed of sound -- the first human creating a supersonic boom on the way down. You know. That's big. It's the only existing supersonic boom created by a human person outside a plane!" the Austrian recalled.<br /><br />Baumgartner's speed clinched one of his goals: to become the first skydiver to break the sound barrier<br /><br />.Now, he's waiting for the release of the documentary produced by the BBC and National Geographic that chronicle the past five years of the Red Bull Stratos project to break the high-altitude jump record set by Joe Kittinger back in 1960.</p>

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