Over 8 million concurrent users, the most ever on YouTube tuned into the livestream of Felix Baumgartner's supersonic skydive from the edge of space. "It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be," says Austrian Felix Baumgartner who broke the record for the highest ever skydive by leaping out of a balloon at a height of 39 km. The mission broke world records for maximum vertical velocity (833.9 mph), longest distance freefall (119,846 feet), and the highest jump from a platform (128,100 feet). Felix's jump took over five years of work from the Red Bull Stratos mission team, after rising in a capsule propelled by 30 million cubic feet of helium.
Describing his record breaking jump from the stratosphere, he said: "The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought I'd just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that I'd lose consciousness."



"It was an incredible up and down today, just like it's been with the whole project," said Baumgartner, recounting his experience after the jump. "First we got off with a beautiful launch and then we had a bit of drama with a power supply issue to my visor," redbullstratos.com Monday quoted Baumgartner as saying.

"I didn't feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. We'll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be," he said.
-IANS