MAN SANS MACHINE BREAKS SOUND BARRIER

Felix Baumgartner breaks sound barrier as he jumps from edge of space.

Baumgartner reached speeds in excess of 800 mph, breaking the speed of sound on the same day that test pilot Chuck Yaeger did it in 1947 in a rocket with wings.

No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a space suit.

After the unprecedented leap from 24 miles up his maximum speed was tracked at 833.9 mph, or Mach 1.24. Baumgartner, 43, rocketed head first for more than four minutes before deploying his chute.

The old sub-space HALO infil isn't a joke anymore. Congratulations to this entrepid warrior!

It's good to see that there are still some Final Frontiers out there, and some brave souls willing to pioneer them.

Joe Kittinger didn't jump from space in August of 1960 to set a record. He did it to prove pilots could survive a 23-mile fall.


Back in the day we Special Forces Combat Divers used to wear the Navy SCUBA Diver badge . . .

. . . it was a nondescript little number but we were damn proud of it because we practically had to drown to earn it and along the way we learned how waves tides and currents do not affect the Combat Diver . . . and there was a running joke that went with the badge.

Sooner or later some young babe was going to ask, "Excuse me Sergeant, what is that badge?" and the stock answer was, "Space Shuttle Door Gunner." When they looked at you incredulous, the follow up was, "It was a project they had going in the 80s, we used to get Astronaut Qualified. But they discontinued it, moved the funding over to the stealth bomber project."

The rule is we're supposed to always tell the truth comes with an exclusion clause; you can say anything you want to some young bimbo in a bar. My moment came in the old PX on main post Fort Bragg; some young blonde private from the XVIIIth Airborne Corps. I swear I thought her eyes were going to pop right out of her eye sockets when I laid that whopper on her. She believed me.

"I don't care how many skydives you have, Until you step out of a plane into pitch black darkness at 800' with 200lbs worth of lightweight gear strapped onto your ass and 40lbs of parachute you're still just another f*cking leg!"



Well okay, we'll make an exception - this guy is worthy . . .

- STORMBRINGER SENDS