Thread: 64-year-old man plans to free-fall 130,000 feet Monday. . .

The Canadian Press is reporting that a veteran parachutist is planning to set a world free-fall record in the pre-dawn hours Monday morning, taking a helium balloon 130,000 feet into the air (like to the edge of space) and stepping off it and falling toward the ground. The fall is expected to take about 15 minutes. . .

NORTH BATTLEFORD, Sask. - Michel Fournier began final preparations Saturday for a stunt that will, should all go well, end in the pre-dawn darkness Monday with him rising slowly in a helium-powered balloon pod until he can touch the very void of space - and then step off.

The 64-year-old French skydiver aims to free fall 40,000 metres (130,000 feet) from the stratosphere in a specially designed suit, helmet and parachute to advance the cause of science and, in the process, break four free fall records.

"The jump, based on weather conditions, is planned for Monday 4 a.m. local time," Francine Lecompte-Gittins, spokesperson for the jump, said in an e-mail Saturday.

She is one of an army of technicians, data crunchers, balloon and weather specialists who have arrived at this city of 14,000 near the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary for Fournier's third attempt.

The first two - in 2002 and 2003 - ended when wind gusts shredded his balloon before it even became airborne.

This time, the balloon is three layers thick and the plan is to go up before the sun comes up Monday - when the skies are expected to be clear and, hopefully, without a breath of wind.

Fournier, a former army paratrooper with more than 8,000 jumps under his belt, hopes to bring back data that will help astronauts and others survive in the highest of altitudes. He wants to also break the record for the fastest and longest free fall, the highest parachute jump and the highest balloon flight.

He'll be three-times higher than a commercial jetliner. A mountain climber would have to ascend the equivalent of four Mount Everests stacked one on top of the other.

It's expected to take him 15 minutes just to come down, screaming through thin air at 1,500 kilometres an hour, - 1.7 times the speed of sound - smashing through the sound barrier, shock waves buffeting his body, before finally deploying his chute about 6,000 metres above the prairie wheat fields.


630 CHED - National News


This is like a 15-minute long drop off a cliff by Wily E. Coyote. . .if his suit fails, it's all over.

Kinda jealous, what a rush that must be.