The fright stuff
THINKabout people pushing the very limits of what is possible, and there’s every chance that, these days, you’ll be thinking about the world’s top extreme athletes. Think ofhumanendeavour and shear balls, and certain names immediately come to mind. Names like skateboarders Tony ‘The Birdman’Hawkand Bob Burnquist, skier Tanner Hall, snowboarders Travis Rice and Shaun White, motor maniac Travis Pastrana and legendary ultra distance runner Micah True.
True legends. Yet turn back the clock fifty years, and there was a different breed of legend. People that famed American writerTom Wolfe termed those with ‘‘the right stuff.’’ I’m talking, of course, about astronauts. Those crazy bastards who, in the sixties, would effectively strap themselves onto missiles just waiting to explore and head into territory nohumanhad ever gone to. Crazy bastards, but legends too. I reckon the likes of Al Sheppard, Gus Grissom, Jim Lovell and Neil Armstrong would get on just fine with the likes of Rice, Pastrana, White and co. Afewbeers, a bit of a yarn. The goalposts may have shifted slightly since, but the heart and soul that drives both parties has remained true. Acourage to do things that few believe are possible. To prove others wong, to explore the very limitations of what is humanly possible.
Austrian Felix Baumgartner is a bloke bridging the gap between the past and the present. Much has been written about Baumgartner; he’s planning on attempting the highest ever balloon flight, going 40 kilometres up, before leaping out for the world’s longest ever free fall skydive, breaking the speed of sound in the process.
The science that has allowed Baumgartner to plan his trip is right up the Nasa alley, well, if Nasa was still about. His spacesuit is super high-tech, made to deal with conditions that could stop your heart and make blood fizz in your veins.
Baumgartner’s team believe that such a mission, using such a suit, could be used by future astronauts to free fall to earth if their spacecraft malfunctions during atmosphere re-entry.
‘‘There is an eerie picture from the debris field of the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster. The astronauts didn’t have their helmets on and one of the helmets is sitting on the ground without a scratch on it.
‘‘If the astronaut was still wearing it, perhaps that person could have survived,’’ Art Thompson, the technical director of Red Bull Stratos, the team behind the jump, said recently after floating the radical idea.
There’s another link to the Columbia disaster, which seven astronauts died in upon re-entry; Jon Clark is the team’s medical director. His wife Laurel was one of the astronauts killed in the disaster.
Bridging the ballsy athletes of today with the legend’s of yesterday – pretty cool stuff, and potentially incredibly helpful too.