After months of planning and one weather delay, Felix Baumgartner donned a space suit and climbed aboard a capsule attached to a high altitude balloon, in order to perform the first ever space jump. If you don't know what that is, Felix went into space, and jumped back to Earth unassisted with just him, his suit, and a parachute of course.
While watching it live on the Discovery Channel, just the view from inside the capsule looking back at Earth made me a bit queasy. I won't even climb a ladder, let alone jump from outside our atmosphere but this lunatic did it while hitting Mach 1.24 in his free fall. Yes, that's faster than the speed of sound.
When asked about traveling faster than the speed of sound, Baumgartner said it is "hard to describe because you don't feel it." Because of the suit, he wasn't able to hear the sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier and with no reference points as you fall, "you don't know how fast you travel."
All of this is not just a great achievement that he can use to get free drinks for life, but the data gathered from the jump will assist NASA scientists for years to come as they work to improve future spacesuits.
If you want to watch the full video of the jump, you can check it out here. But, almost as importantly, you can check out Baumgartner being immortalized in the world of LEGO videos below. You know you've made it in life when someone turns you into a LEGO.
