Falling Longer, Further & Faster Than Anyone In History
May 24, 2008 (12 Responses)
IT’S AMAZING WHAT AN OBSESSIVE person can accomplish sometimes, and certainly obsession is what has driven french parachutist Michel Fournier to the point where he intends to break a hell of a lot of records.
Picture this for a challenge…This guy intends to climb into a pressurized gondola of a 650-foot balloon, which resembles a giant jellyfish, and make a two-hour journey to 131,000 feet. Then, almost 25 miles up, Fournier will see both the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth.
Oh and another thing… he will also experience weightlessness. Not content with all of this he will then step out of the capsule / gondola and drop like a stone back down to earth for approximately 15 minutes equiped with only a spacesuit and a parachute.
In doing so, he will – if successful – fall longer, further and faster than anyone in history and may even break the sound barrier in the process. Fournier calls this project “Le Grand Saut” (The Great Leap) and has been working towards this for over 20 years.
The expectation is that Fournier would be in free fall for about eight minutes. He should exceed the speed of sound within the first 40 seconds and eventually approach 1,000 miles an hour. His fall should slow at lower altitudes amid increasing wind resistance and his parachute is designed to open at around 20,000 feet.
I know there are people out there who will question the whole point of such an expedition, perhaps pointing out that other than breaking a record or ten it doesn’t actually achieve anything monumental, but I would have to disagree with them. This will be a spectacular personal achievement for the french parachutist if he manages to pull it off and he deserves credit for never quitting and letting his dream just fade away with age.
Oh yeah – did I fail to mention that little piece of info? You see, Michel Fournier is now 64 years old, and he has been trying to achieve this for 20 years.
The attempt will take place next Sunday, so keep your eyes on the skies… you never know what might be falling towards you at the speed of sound 
Update (26th May 2008): Strong winds have forced French skydiver Michel Fournier to postpone his historic 40-kilometer (25-mile) leap from the edge of the stratosphere back to Earth, which is now set for Tuesday 3rd June 2008 instead.
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Good heavens. I wonder what kind of a crater a human falling at the speed of sound makes… Seriously though, you have to be a special kind of crazy to do something like this!
Somewhere in the far-off, deepest recesses of what passes for my mind, I vaguely recall reading about one of the previous recordholders. If memory serves correctly, he blacked out during the fall, missing most of it, and only waking up shortly before hitting the groud.
That would be about my luck…sleep through the whole thing.
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That Michael Fournier sure is a mouthy bastard, isn’t he?
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