Space Dive Page #4

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I was unconscious.

I could have died.

Spinning with your head

at the centre of rotation

means the G-force pulls

the blood out of your brain,

causing a blackout.

Spinning with your feet

at the centre means

the blood rushes

into your brain,

causing what's known

as a redout.

Both could be lethal.

So the whole team throw themselves

at one problem -

how to stop a supersonic spin.

'How much of a spin is too much

for you to recover from?

'Nobody really knows.'

Stop, stop, stop, stop!

It's stopped.

HE LAUGHS:

Was that fast enough that time?

'When I'm spinning so fast'

that I can't bring my arms in,

that's too much of a spin.

That was my first take on it.

But I didn't know how much that was,

so I went up and skydived

and I tried different things,

and I took a G-meter up,

see how much the Gs spun.

Skydiver Luke Aikens

tests lots of systems,

but can't find one that will cope

with the force Felix will achieve.

Then he has a brainwave.

Supersonic bombs use

a small stabilisation chute

known as a drogue

to land point-first.

Maybe it could be adapted

to help Felix.

So I'm out of control,

fire the drogue, boom.

It just grabs you

and flips you right-side up.

Pretty amazing how well that works.

So now I'm going

to spin this thing around.

If he's spinning about this fast

for six seconds,

we came up with a device that will

automatically fire the drogue.

You'll see the light

come on in the drogue,

boom, the drogue fires.

The drogue chute is a last resort.

Felix will only use it

in an emergency.

If something gets bad,

he has that option.

If not, we never see that thing,

and all this hard work

is for nothing.

Felix continues his series

of low-altitude test jumps.

His confidence in the suit

is building.

Until it all goes very wrong.

What is going on here?

That's his parachute!

Felix has accidentally cut away

his main parachute

and now he can't find the handle

for his reserve.

What's that and what's that?

At 2,000 feet, just seconds

from it being critical,

he finds it.

Here, we've got to go get him.

We've got to go get him.

The unfamiliar suit and parachute

meant Felix had pulled

the wrong handle.

I thought, "What's going on

with my handle?"

And then I figured,

"Hey, this is the reserve

cut-away handle..."

And you were getting

close to the ground by then.

I saw the ground coming up,

and I thought...! Yeah.

"That's going to hurt." Yeah!

Scared me.

I know!

HE LAUGHS:

It scared the ... out of me as well.

Trust me. Yeah.

Ahhh. Still alive.

Don't do that, OK?

No, I'm not.

All the safety relies

on the engineers, you know?

There are so many things

that I have no control of.

Stuff that I don't know.

I have to trust these guys.

The difference

between them and me is,

if they fail,

they don't lose their lives.

My biggest desire

is to keep Felix safe.

I feel like his life is in my hands,

and the last thing I want to do

is kill my friend, so...

The science team's

struggle with safety

is making the engineering

more complex.

And the technology

is still not ready.

The launch date is delayed,

and Felix arrives with a team

from Red Bull

for an emergency meeting.

We've been spending a lot money

and we are far behind

all the deadlines.

A lot of things are not working out

as they are supposed to be,

and this is...

Let's call it judgement day,

you know.

Art, even if he is my friend,

I can't afford to work like this

and that's why I strongly recommend

we take Art off

as project leader today.

It's not that we're

going to fire Art.

He just has to step back

to the second line.

We're going to take Patrick

as project leader.

But Art and his team have no idea

that he's about to be replaced

by his second-in-command.

Did you ride in with the crazy man?

Yes.

Felix insists that the camera

stays outside the office

and the microphones are turned off.

THEY SPEAK WITHOUT SOUND

'Just told him.'

We just told him.

Of course, he didn't like the idea,

but I'm so focused on the project,

that no matter what it takes,

I'm willing to do it

to make this happen.

Just when you think

you have it all figured out,

all of a sudden

you get another surprise.

It's the most complicated mess

I've ever been involved in.

STUDIO CHATTER:

Despite the chaos behind the scenes,

Red Bull isn't giving up.

..the daring and dangerous attempt

to break world records

that have stood...

You jumped out of a balloon

at 102,000ft?

Absolutely. Sure did.

What did that feel like?

What sounds like a plot of a

far-fetched Hollywood movie...

This year, the skydiver...

THEY SPEAK FOREIGN LANGUAGES

..going up 37km

into the sky and then jumping out.

Then I step off.

Within the first 30 seconds,

I'll reach the speed of sound.

Wow. Good luck...

..to both of you

and we appreciate you joining us.

The whole world now

knows about Felix's jump.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

'A friend of mine,

he built this stone for me as a gift

because it says "Born to fly" on that

stone, and now we put the stone

right in front of my house.

It says

"Born to fly" on it, so I love it.

Not so good.

If you lose your English,

just say I'm proud of my son.

Every time. When they ask you

something - do you think it's

dangerous? "I'm proud of my son."

How was he as a little kid?

I'm proud of my son.

Just say that.

I am proud of my son.

Back at base,

things are going from bad to worse.

Following Art's demotion,

the engineers are on the brink

of mutiny.

I don't approve of this leadership

change. It doesn't work for me.

And I don't believe it

works for the team.

You know, it may have made sense to

Red Bull but for us,

it hasn't been productive.

'I said I can't work under

those terms,

'so I'll be leaving on Wednesday.'

I give my resignation

from this team.

I come in later.

I'm kind of like the step-parent

who comes into the relationship and

all the kids are not really ready to

respect the instructions.

It doesn't matter

if they're right or wrong,

they're just there to push back

because you're not the one

who was here

when the rules were set originally.

So you're saying it's going to be

about three weeks, did you say?

No, about a month.

About a month? That's a concern.

Hey, Patrick?

My concern here on this is that

we've got a partial system,

we still don't have flight hardware.

It's going to take another month.

Is this just going to keep

going on indefinitely?

Why don't we have a complete

system two months ago?

Well, it's a little

behind the schedule

we had from five months ago but,

it's not nearly as far behind as

everything else on the project

from six or seven months ago.

All right, so there we have it.

There's a lot of work to be done

and it's very frustrating to be

kept out of the loop.

'I hate to be isolated, I do.

'This is what

they do to people in prison.'

After only a few weeks as technical

director, Patrick resigns.

Going through some of the things

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