Long story short, Cani’s funding fell through, and the problem was still nagging Eustace. When the body sails into the stratosphere, the pressure difference can lead to the formation of dangerous nitrogen bubbles in the blood (like the bends that scuba divers try to avoid). In doing so, he set a world record for the highest free fall jump on October 24, 2014 over Roswell, New Mexico. But Eustace says there’s no reason one couldn’t don a suit and make a hang gliding descent from 70,000 feet. Around the same time, Felix Baumgartner and his Red Bull-sponsored team were revving up for their own record-breaking jump. In theory, the StratEx system could be used for future high-altitude or space applications, including MacCallum’s new strato-tourism venture. Prior to that, Alan spent 15 years at Digital/Compaq/HP’s Western Research Laboratory (WRL). He has been continuing jump training with an advanced instructor, including tandem-jump training. Frequent contributor Mark Betancourt is based in Washington, D.C. Continue Meet Alan Eustace — The Man Who Completed History’s Highest Skydive [VIDEO] In 2014, computer scientist and Google Executive Alan Eustace jumped from more than 135,000 feet above the Earth. He didn't have much time to enjoy the view. Besides, he and his band of geek pioneers have already advanced the state of the art. Google Vice President Alan Eustace broke the record for highest skydive jumping from approximately 135,000 feet. The highest skydive ever attempted was by Alan Eustace at the amazing height of 135,890 feet! So Eustace decided to bypass the idea of a capsule altogether. And when his handlers had trouble dumping Eustace out the back of an airplane during test jumps, they bolted roller blades to his chest plate to make it easier to get him out the door without damaging the suit. Google executive jumps from edge of space, breaks speed of sound, in record skydive. This was a scientific project, StratEx(Stratosphere Explorer), which aimed to create a spacesuit and system that would … "I don't have a space suit, my wife would divorce me, and my team went on to other things," he said. Google executive Alan Eustace set a new mark Friday when he fell from an altitude of more than 135,000 feet, plummeting in a free-fall for about 5 minutes before deploying his parachute. So, just like that, he set out to revolutionize high-altitude travel. "It's the first suit that's both been cooled and heated," Eustace said. "The third one, I knew it was the last jump that I was going to make and I was just taking it in. In a harrowing plunge from the stratosphere, a Google executive broke the world record for the highest-altitude skydive today (Oct. 24). The idea was to get rid of all the extra baggage used by previous visitors to the stratosphere—namely, the vehicles they rode in for the ascent. The drogue itself presented perhaps the greatest problem, one that had nearly killed Joe Kittinger back in 1959. "That's 25% more pressure than any other suit," he said, adding, "the suit itself was the first manned suit that had ever been designed in like 25 years. Back in the early space age, General Electric came up with a concept called MOOSE (Man Out of Space Easiest), essentially a one-person life raft equipped with a rocket for de-orbiting and a heat shield. I tried to relax as much as I possibly could because it keeps your heart rate low and your respiration low.". But this suit had to be both cooled on the ground and heated in the air.". From that height — in the area between the Earth and space — you can glimpse the curvature of the planet. The StratEx team solved the problem ingeniously. Advertising Notice Then there was the flat-spin problem. ILC also had to make sure the suit could withstand both the intense heat of the New Mexico desert, where Eustace took off, and the extreme cold of the upper atmosphere, where temperatures can dip as low as -60 degrees Fahrenheit (-51 Celsius). Know the latest in healthcare industry with our Healthcare newsletter. "I'm obsessed sometimes with problems," he said. They felt confident they’d be able to beat Baumgartner’s altitude record when the time came. The chute deployed early, while the air was still thin, and the boom kept it away from Eustace, and all without using any actuated parts. All previous balloon ventures had relied on capsules or gondolas to convey people to the stratosphere, but Eustace believed the trip could be made simpler. Eustace knew it was important to remain calm during his big jump. Eustace has thought about it. But he said there's no way he'll ever jump from that height again. He has also worn his suit and simulated equipment in vertical wind tunnel tests and during airplane jumps. Stratospheric Publishing, 2016. He is an experienced multi-engine jet pilot and an experienced skydiver. Eustace said that in the end, his fall was not a test of nerves. One of the most beautiful places on Earth — or maybe above Earth, depending on how you look at it.". With the entire life support system built into the suit (the soft parts of which were made by ILC Dover, the company that makes NASA’s spacesuits), the interface between Eustace and balloon was now, literally, a hook. This broke the previous record of 127,800 feet, held for only two years by Red Bull. Alan Eustace set the current world altitude record for a skydive, jumping from 135,890 feet in October 2014. Google executive Alan Eustace broke the sound barrier and set several skydiving records over the southern New Mexico desert early Friday after taking a big leap from the edge of space. The jump was made by Alan Eustace, 57, a senior vice president of Google. "Most suits are cooled for things like spacewalks and moon walks. Worried that the kind of publicity that Red Bull drew would make him more likely to cut corners—the show must go on, after all, and when the world is watching, no one wants to delay a launch—Eustace chose to fund the project himself and assembled a team that vowed to maintain secrecy. He began by calling MacCallum, who at the time (October 2011) was running Paragon Space Development Corporation, a contractor specializing in life support systems for extreme environments. After months of head-scratching and testing, the team finally figured out that the drogue had to be attached as high on Eustace’s body as possible so that he descended supersonically at an angle, with his feet below him. Watch Alan Eustace jump video. None of this had been done before, but Eustace’s three balloon flights, culminating with the record-setting jump on October 24, 2014, over Roswell, New Mexico, proved that it all worked perfectly. “If it was me, I wouldn’t even use a capsule,” Eustace said. “As much as anything, he was interested in the learning curve,” says Taber MacCallum, who served as Eustace’s safety officer and is now chief technology officer at World View, a company trying to open the stratosphere to tourists. Alan Eustice retired after 13 years with Google, where he served as SVP of Engineering and Senior VP of Knowledge, and broke the world record for the highest skydive of all time. If you try to deploy the drogue late in the jump, when the air is denser, it will rupture, because by that time the guy in the suit is pushing Mach 1. This time the issue isn’t protection from the vacuum of space, but the challenge of entering the atmosphere at 17,000 mph. The teams really exercised a lot of new and interesting materials. Eustace imagines something akin to the small, disposable reentry vehicles that NASA and the European Space Agency have proposed as a means to get experiment payloads down from orbit. During the first test jump, as Eustace exited the aircraft, the antenna used for his communications and GPS location was sheared off. The idea cropped up sometime after his jump, when someone—this time a child—asked him how high one could go wearing his StratEx suit. Afterward, Eustace had nothing but praise for the suit, which he called “the most protective environment you’ll ever see.”. Eustace embarked on the supersonic skydive near the top of the stratosphere over Roswell, New Mexico, just after dawn on Friday, exceeding the speed of sound as he was in free fall, the BBC reports. Give a Gift, © 2021 Air & Space Magazine. Eustace, at the time a chief Google engineer and pilot, plunged 25 miles from the stratosphere down to Earth on October 24, 2014. Smithsonian Institution, Air & Space Magazine Someone else can pick up the work from here. The liquid nitrogen-cooled walk-in freezer StratEx used to test the suit’s heating system would get so cold that the floor would pop up and make “pinging” noises. That’s no accident: Eustace wanted it that way. So he prepared by doing two test falls ahead of time, one from 57,000 feet and another from 105,000. Eustace’s visor kept getting so fogged he couldn’t see, a problem that had plagued all previous jumpers. He started looking into it, scribbling on napkins and asking around at various space tech companies. His team has since formed a company called World View, which is working to replace the world's satellites with balloons called "stratollites." Google executive Alan Eustace has broken the sound barrier and set several skydiving records over the southern New Mexico desert after taking a big leap from the edge of space. An avid skydiver and pilot, Eustace had in late 2010 just finished a pet project proving that one could skydive from a Gulfstream 550 business jet (someone happened to ask him if it was possible, so he spent several years figuring out how to prove that it was, by doing it—this is something of a pattern in his life). Alan Eustace at home in Mountain View, April 2017 (Ian Allen) T he whole thing began innocently enough. Record-Breaking Near-Space Dive Leaps from 135,000 Feet | … Could the innovations in the StratEx system someday lead to a bailout system for astronauts? Eustace, a husband and a father of three, still occasionally skydives and pilots planes, helicopters, and paragliders. But he didn't want to travel up to the stratosphere in a typical air balloon, or ride inside an oxygenated, pressurized pod like the one Baumgartner used. And it seemed like as the problems got harder and the challenges got greater, Alan got even more into it.”, This story is a selection from the February/March issue of Air & Space magazine. Google executive Alan Eustace broke the sound barrier and set several skydiving records over the southern New Mexico desert early Friday after taking a big leap from the edge of space. Everyone that has seen the Red Bull Stratos or Alan Eustace’s record breaking jumps has been in awe of the accomplishment. Because there’s so little air in the stratosphere, for the first part of one of his jumps, the pilot chute designed to deploy Kittinger’s drogue flapped around uninflated and eventually wrapped around his neck. "It's not 100% safe, but it's as close as humans can come.". A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation.
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