Posted on 07/30/2003 10:44:20 PM PDT by HAL9000
An extreme sports fanatic said today he felt “great” after he became the first man to cross the English Channel in an unpowered flight.Felix Baumgartner jumped from a plane about 30,000ft above Dover shortly after 5am and glided 22 miles across the Channel in a 10-minute flight wearing a specially-adapted suit with a wing-like carbon fibre fin attached to his back.
In freezing air temperatures, the 34-year-old Austrian began the flight at a speed of about 220 miles per hour before slowing to around 135 miles an hour.
Baumgartner made a crunching parachute landing at Cap Blanc-Nez, near Calais, in France. Within minutes of touching down he was smiling and posing for photographers.
“It was pretty cold up there,” he told Sky News. “I still can’t feel anything. But I made it, which is great.” He said cloud cover meant he could not see where he was going and had to follow his two planes across the Channel.
“For the last 2,000m I could see the other side and I knew I was going to make it,” he said.
Baumgartner was equipped with cameras as well as highly-advanced data monitoring technology to ensure that he could be tracked during his journey.
His new wing had a span of 1.8 metres – making it 10 centimetres bigger than his previous one with which he won a race against an aeroplane some weeks ago in the United States.
Baumgartner was the first man to parachute from the world’s tallest building, Malaysia’s Petronas Towers, as well as the statue of Christ in the Brazilian city Rio de Janeiro.
Austrian parachuter Felix Baumgartner prepares to jump from the arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro in this file photo. Freefalling at 124 mph, Baumgartner will attempt to create history on Thursday by flying across the Channel wearing a special wing. REUTERS
"Damn, Earl, that's that damdest big duck I ever saw."
"Shut up, Steve, and pass me the 12-gauge. We're eatin' good tonight!"
Get some warm clothing, and if its more fuel efficient than planes like comparing cars and motorcylcles, then I'd be totally down with having a plane on my back that I can immediately open up a shoot from. Lot more like your really flying too. If they could somehow get enough thrust to get you off the ground from the start, this would be really sweet.
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