When it came time for me to jump, I was ready to jump because I was heading back toward a more friendly environment, a friendly planet that we’re used to. I had made this jump a thousand times in my mind. I’d gone through every step a thousand times. Just before I jumped, I said a silent prayer. I reached over to hit a button that started the cameras going. And then I just did a little hop off the step of the gondola. You can’t tell that you’re going fast. You can’t tell anything and I looked up at the balloon and the balloon was firing into space. And I said, “Gosh, that’s amazing.” And then I realized it was me that was going down at a fantastic rate and the balloon was standing still. 

 

He falls for 16 miles. The thin air offers almost no resistance. He reaches 614 miles an hour, approaching the speed of sound. After a record-breaking 4 minutes and 36 seconds of free fall, Kittinger opens the main parachute. He drifts down to the desert floor and lands. 

 

We were just elated because we had accomplished what we’d set out to do. There were a lot of people that said we couldn’t do it. And we proved that we could do it…