Last October more than 8 million people watched on YouTube as Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner jumped from a balloon 24 miles above the ground. During a 4 minute 20 second free fall, he became the first person to break the sound barrier without a plane. He also broke the record for highest skydive, set by his mentor, former test pilot Joseph Kittinger. In 1959 and 1960, when the Air Force was testing ejection seat technology in jet fighters, Kittinger made three jumps from the stratosphere to try a parachute optimized for high-altitude bail-outs.
There are no ejection seats in the space planes being built by private companies like Virgin Galactic, but that may change now due to innovations developed for the extreme jump. Skydiver Luke Aikins, the designer of Baumgartner’s parachute system, says the most important technology he tested was an automatic rip cord that deploys if it senses that ...
