BAUMGARTNER, Felix

Is a skydiver and a BASE jumper whom perform his stunts sponsored by Red Bull. BASE is an acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can made a parachute jump: buildings, aerials, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs).

He was born on 20 April 1969 in Salzburg, Austria and in his youth he spent time in the Austrian military where he practiced parachute jumping, including training to land on small target zones.

He is renowned for the particularly dangerous nature of the stunts he has performed during his career.

In 1999 he claimed the world record for the highest parachute dive from a building when he jumped from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

On 31 July 2003, Baumgartner became the first person to cross the English Channel in freefall using a specially made fibre wing.

Also he set the world record for the lowest BASE jump ever, from the hand of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

He became the first person to BASE jump from the completed Millau Viaduct in France on 27 June 2004 and the first person to sky dive onto, then BASE jump from, the Turning Torso building in Malmö, Sweden on 18 August 2006.

Finally on 12 December 2007 he became the first person to jump from the 91st floor observation deck, of the then tallest completed building in the world, :Taipei 101, in Taiwan.

Since 2005 he worked in the "Red Bull Stratos" project along a team of scientists and technicians. The objective was to perform three jumps from a capsule suspended by a stratospheric balloon at different altitudes.

He succesfuly performed the jumps and during the last one, he managed to break several world records as well obtained useful information for the development of future techniques and hardware useful for high-altitude bail-out procedures.

Althought, there is still a record to break (longest free fall still belonging to Joe Kittinger), after the Red Bull Stratos jump, Baumgartner confirmed that he will not to continue with these high altitude jumps.

Balloon flights of the Red Bull Stratos project with Felix Baumgartner

Launch baseDateFlight DurationExperimentPayload landing place or cause of the failure
Roswell (NM)3/13/2012---RED BULL STRATOS I - (Baumgartner)Balloon failure at launch
Roswell (NM)3/15/2012---RED BULL STRATOS I - (Baumgartner)20 miles E of Roswell, New Mexico, US
Roswell (NM)7/25/2012---RED BULL STRATOS II - (Baumgartner)Near Roswell, New Mexico, US
Roswell (NM)10/9/2012---RED BULL STRATOS III - (Baumgartner)Ground Abort. Balloon destroyed by a gust of wind during inflation
Roswell (NM)10/14/2012---RED BULL STRATOS III - (Baumgartner)37 miles E of Roswell, New Mexico, US

Related Entries