Space Dive Page #2

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It's life-threatening.

Above the Armstrong line,

you don't have the pressure

of the atmosphere holding the gas

in your blood stream.

The gas is trying to find

the fastest path out of your body.

Out of every orifice you have,

you'll start to ooze fluids.

Your body wants to swell up

twice its size.

It's like the worst possible

horror film.

We can show you a video of a guy

that had that in a chamber,

suit pressurised, it becomes

disconnected from a life support.

He remembered his tongue

was boiling.

'You're so far away from anything,

any medical treatment,

'any help at all.

If something goes wrong,'

you're by yourself.

That is really scary.

This is what I'm thinking about

all the time.

Where do you want to abort? At what

level of risk do you want to abort?

Only way to ensure his safety

is stay on the ground.

He's not going to do that.

We're talking about risk factors -

that's a crock.

We're going to do this project.

Let's just get out of this,

accept a little bit of risk

and press on.

'The consensus is that

he can survive the experience.'

I hope we're right.

Felix has one key piece

of safety equipment

that he has to learn to trust -

his pressurised space suit.

Joe takes him to be fitted

at the same company that made

his space suit 50 years ago.

It's a piece of art.

It's all hand done.

She just assembled these two pieces,

you can not see where

she just sewed that together.

It's impossible.

I think it's right there.

Where? No, I don't think so!

THEY LAUGH:

Cos I can't find it either.

It will take a team of people

more than a year

to build the customised suit.

A single flaw could be deadly.

You have to be very exact

about everything.

If you did do something wrong,

it could be someone's life,

you know, so...

But they check us much too much.

Space suits are designed for

protection, not for free-falling.

This is a whole new world for Felix.

Ready to do this?

Screw it in, clockwise. Screw it in.

Run it up to 3 PSI.

FELIX SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

The suit is inflated with air,

creating a protective cocoon

around the body.

Can I jump?

This pressurised air

keeps you alive at altitude

but makes movement difficult.

Three, two, one.

Get full flex. All the way back.

Good.

Do that again.

'It's hard to describe how it feels.

'Your movements are totally limited.'

Is that hard? Is that OK?

'You can't breathe

that easy any more.

'It's difficult, you know?'

You don't feel a damn thing

in that suit.

When I go for a skydive,

I want the air

floating around my body.

I want to feel it,

I want to feel the speed,

I want to feel the temperature.

Work with the air, use it,

so you can move your body

while falling down.

'So first time wearing

the pressure suit,

'pumped up like this,'

it was like,

"Where's my freedom? It's gone!"

Felix will have to learn how to

freefall in a rigid pressure suit.

The first person

ever to do that was Joe.

Hey, Joe. Remember this?

Yeah. Looks familiar.

It's a picture of Joe

going out of the gondola.

To me it was a lot simpler,

a lot easier.

I'd worn pressure suits a long time.

I'd flown aeroplanes

in pressure suits

so I was used to flying

with a pressure suit.

I'd got used to how uncomfortable

it is.

Yeah, and I'm not a fighter pilot.

I didn't spend much time

in a pressure suit

so that's the big thing.

You are an attitude.

Back in '55, '56, '57,

space was something that no-one

ever thought would happen.

Some people actually said

we could never go there.

When Joe began his mission,

NASA was just being formed

and space travel

was still a thing of the future.

His jump was part of a research

programme called Project Excelsior.

I wasn't interested in skydiving,

I wasn't interested

in setting records.

I was interested in getting escape

systems for pilots and astronauts.

I never get tired of watching

the footage.

It's incredible. I don't either.

It's just incredible.

Oh, you know,

it was the most significant thing

to happen in my life,

that parachute jump was.

It's just as vivid in my mind today

as it was the day I did it.

On 16th August 1960,

Joe left earth on a mission

to see if a pilot could survive

an emergency bailout

from the edge of space.

His every word

was recorded for research.

What I have here really

is a transcript

and this is what I said.

I said,

"Overhead it's black, probably

because of the polarization.

"Beneath me I can see the clouds.

Quite fantastic."

The balloon carried Joe

19 miles above the earth.

It's just a beautiful,

beautiful setting.

But then all of a sudden you realise

that it's hostile. VERY hostile.

As he was preparing to jump,

Joe made a terrifying discovery...

..he had a hole

in one of his gloves.

My hand started swelling

twice it's normal size.

I was really distressed.

I thought, "Well, if I tell

the ground that I have this problem,

"they're going to make me abort."

But I was there as a test pilot,

and my job now was to jump.

I took a deep breath...

I stood up, moved to the door...

I said "Lord, take care of me now."

"Awfully bright. Cold in my legs.

"Can't get my breath."

Joe ignored the pain in his hand

and recorded everything

he could feel and see as he fell.

I said, "Gosh, I'm not

accelerating very fast,"

cos you have nothing

to define speed.

There's no signposts going by,

there's nothing visual at all.

In fact, Joe was falling at 614 mph,

just short of the speed of sound.

"70,000. Beautiful.

"Hit it in 35 secs.

"60,000. 50,000."

The further I fell,

the happier I got,

because I knew I was going back down

to a safer environment.

And that's a nice thought.

At 18,000 feet, after a

four-and-a-half minute freefall,

Joe's chute opened.

"Oh, gee, that sure feels good,

that cold air.

"Ah, boy. Thank you, God, thank you.

"Thank you for protecting me during

that long descent. Thank you, God."

Joe's injured hand

eventually healed.

The data from his freefall helped

develop a parachute escape system

used by high-altitude pilots.

Now, Joe has to train Felix

to do what he did,

only faster and further.

It was the highlight of my life.

Until I have to beat

Felix's new record.

And I know how to do it now,

cos they've got all the equipment.

I don't know if Felix told you,

but I'm his backup.

If he breaks his leg or something

I'm going to be his backup

for the jump.

It's not commonly known,

but, uh, that's the agreement

that Felix and I have.

I don't ever want to see this

like this again.

You stretch your lines out.

From now on, I don't want to see

a cord like this.

C'mon now, we're better than that.

Back at mission headquarters,

Art and the team are struggling

with the capsule.

Three, two, one.

Woo!

APPLAUSE:

We'll see what the load cell says.

Even simple tests hit problems.

The sensor's messed up.

This project is so mentally,

physically, intense...

COMPUTER CHIMES:

..a lot of my crew is convinced

I'm trying to kill them.

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