Space Dive

Sunday 14th October.

Mission control. We're in perfect conditions for launch.

The world is watching...

To expedite the process...

..as a man in a space suit flies a balloon to 128,000 feet.

We are away. Felix is away.

At the edge of space, he leaves the capsule,

stands on a tiny step...

..and jumps.

He becomes the first person to fall faster than the speed of sound.

But although the world watched, it didn't see the whole story.

How seconds earlier, as he fell, Felix Baumgartner lost control

and came close to disaster.

What is he doing? He's spinning, isn't he?

How on the way up, he was nearly forced to call off the whole jump.

We have an emergency here. We could very well be cutting him down any minute.

And how four years of struggles and setbacks

pushed the mission to the brink of collapse.

Two flights, two mission aborts - stop selling me excuses.

What's going on?

He had the opportunity to get trained properly. He never took advantage of it.

Sometimes feels like it's just too much.

This is the untold story of how a team of scientists

and sky-divers...

Rock and roll!

..took a giant leap...

..and stunned the world.

I had this dream when I was a little kid.

And I'm still having it two or three times a month.

Always the same dream, you know,

I'm just walking out here on the street,

I run for a couple of feet, then I take off.

It was always a show-off flight to my friends,

cos they don't believe it.

I'm always telling them, "OK, wait until you see this."

You can do backflips, front flips, you can do spins,

you can do whatever you want.

Then coming back after a couple of minutes and telling them, "See, I told you I can fly."

Felix Baumgartner is gripped by an obsession.

He wants to fly.

Higher, further, faster than any human has ever dared.

But to realise that dream, he needs to break a record

that has stood for more than fifty years.

In 1960, test pilot Joe Kittinger volunteered for a mission

to test survival at the edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

Protected by just a pressure suit,

he flew a balloon beyond 100,000 feet.

Not only did he survive the flight,

at the edge of space, he did something extraordinary.

Joe fell 19 miles back to earth.

His feat was so dangerous

and technically difficult that it has never been matched.

Before Felix can take on HIS near-space mission,

he needs to be trained.

Only one man has the skills and experience for the job.

Retired Colonel...Joe Kittinger.

I think the first week after my jump I got a phone call from a guy

wanting to beat my record.

And monthly since then, for 50 years I've been getting calls.

99% of them have no idea of the challenge.

Joe has come out of retirement to help Felix break his record

and become the first person

to freefall faster than the speed of sound.

It's kind of a weird thought

when you look at all these supersonic planes.

And when I do my jump, I'm travelling at the same speed.

Well, nobody's ever done it.

I can't estimate, but it's going to be the dynamics, aeronautics,

CG changes, turbulence.

Felix really doesn't have the experience

and the background that I had.

But he'll be going five miles higher than what I jumped from

so I've got to be extra intense at looking at how he's doing.

When I go supersonic speed, I almost become an aeroplane.

You're a bomb.

A bomb?

You're a bomb.

I want to be an aeroplane, not a bomb!

You're a bomb that can manoeuvre.

But I was born to fly.

That's right, you were born to fly. And you'd better fly too!

Felix has already turned his obsession with flying into a career.

He is a professional BASE jumper.

He's set records for the highest jump from a building...

..and the lowest.

But for this mission,

Felix needs to jump from 20 miles higher than he has ever been before.

Just getting there

requires a multi-million dollar space programme.

Screw it in, screw it in. It's still got to go this way.

A team of 20 engineers and scientists

is working on the technology to fly Felix beyond the stratosphere.

We're trying to take a human being up into space

and have him come back safely.

I've got a diagram here.

I call it a plumbing diagram - we're space plumbers.

All the way over.

The man in charge is Art Thompson.

Oh, my God! This is going to be big, isn't it?!

Art has worked on rocket planes for NASA

and stealth bombers for the US military.

But for this mission, he's working for an Austrian drinks company.

You really got to kind of hand it to them that they took on

this commitment to do, in essence, a privately funded space programme.

But Red Bull's budget of £3.5 million pounds

comes with something these engineers aren't used to -

a 12-month deadline.

We've got schedules to make! We've got big schedules to make!

Yeah!

Despite the lack of time, Art's ideas for the project are ambitious.

It starts out really simple

as a napkin sketch in the middle of the night

and eventually that ends up becoming more.

It's a technical beast that keeps growing.

Just like Joe's day, the only way up for Felix

is via the oldest aircraft of all - a balloon.

It's almost like the space programme going full circle again.

It started with the balloon, we've come back to the balloon.

But this is no ordinary balloon.

At nearly 30 million cubic feet,

it's the biggest ever used for a manned flight.

One tenth as thick as a polythene bag

but strong enough to carry the space capsule that Art is building.

At launch, it will be filled with helium

until it's taller than a fifty-storey building.

It's amazing that this

piece of plastic, that is no thicker than a dry cleaner bag,

is going to hold up all this weight.

At around 63,000 feet, it will pass through the Armstrong line.

Beyond this point, the lack of pressure

would be deadly without protection.

As it rises, the gas will expand

until the balloon is the width of a football field.

It will take three hours to carry Felix 24 miles above the earth.

Getting him there is hard enough.

Keeping him alive is even harder.

We're talking about the medical and physiological considerations

of an extreme altitude jump.

Felix and Joe meet the project's medical team.

We have to go through the what-if's to understand what our choices are.

It includes a former astronaut

and the world's leading expert on altitude sickness.

This is what happens in the body.

The CO2, partial pressure of oxygen...

The doctors have identified a series of high-altitude dangers.

First, a life-threatening condition called hypoxia.

Definition of hypoxia.

It's a deficiency of oxygen. These are the symptoms.

You may get impaired efficiency, drowsiness, poor judgement,

visual blurring, extreme fatigue,

you're not really functional at that point.

But there's a bigger threat -

the lack of atmospheric pressure above the Armstrong line.

Ebulism. Definition - tissue vaporization. It's dramatic.

It's life-threatening.

Above the Armstrong line, you don't have the pressure

of the atmosphere holding the gas in your blood stream.

The gas is trying to find the fastest path out of your body.

Out of every orifice you have, you'll start to ooze fluids.

Your body wants to swell up twice its size.

It's like the worst possible horror film.

We can show you a video of a guy that had that in a chamber,

suit pressurised, it becomes disconnected from a life support.

He remembered his tongue was boiling.

'You're so far away from anything, any medical treatment,

'any help at all. If something goes wrong,'

you're by yourself. That is really scary.

This is what I'm thinking about all the time.

Where do you want to abort? At what level of risk do you want to abort?

Only way to ensure his safety is stay on the ground.

He's not going to do that.

We're talking about risk factors - that's a crock.

We're going to do this project. Let's just get out of this,

accept a little bit of risk and press on.

'The consensus is that he can survive the experience.'

I hope we're right.

Felix has one key piece of safety equipment

that he has to learn to trust -

his pressurised space suit.

Joe takes him to be fitted

at the same company that made his space suit 50 years ago.

It's a piece of art.

It's all hand done.

She just assembled these two pieces,

you can not see where she just sewed that together.

-It's impossible.

-I think it's right there.

-Where?

-No, I don't think so!

-THEY LAUGH

Cos I can't find it either.

It will take a team of people more than a year

to build the customised suit.

A single flaw could be deadly.

You have to be very exact about everything.

If you did do something wrong, it could be someone's life, you know, so...

But they check us much too much.

Space suits are designed for protection, not for free-falling.

This is a whole new world for Felix.

Ready to do this?

Screw it in, clockwise. Screw it in.

Run it up to 3 PSI.

FELIX SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

The suit is inflated with air,

creating a protective cocoon around the body.

Can I jump?

This pressurised air keeps you alive at altitude

but makes movement difficult.

Three, two, one.

Get full flex. All the way back.

Good.

Do that again.

'It's hard to describe how it feels.

'Your movements are totally limited.'

Is that hard? Is that OK?

'You can't breathe that easy any more.

'It's difficult, you know?'

You don't feel a damn thing in that suit.

When I go for a skydive,

I want the air floating around my body.

I want to feel it, I want to feel the speed,

I want to feel the temperature.

Work with the air, use it,

so you can move your body while falling down.

'So first time wearing the pressure suit,

'pumped up like this,'

it was like, "Where's my freedom? It's gone!"

Felix will have to learn how to freefall in a rigid pressure suit.

The first person ever to do that was Joe.

Hey, Joe. Remember this?

Yeah. Looks familiar.

It's a picture of Joe going out of the gondola.

To me it was a lot simpler, a lot easier.

I'd worn pressure suits a long time.

I'd flown aeroplanes in pressure suits

so I was used to flying with a pressure suit.

I'd got used to how uncomfortable it is.

Yeah, and I'm not a fighter pilot.

I didn't spend much time in a pressure suit

so that's the big thing.

You are an attitude.

Back in '55, '56, '57,

space was something that no-one ever thought would happen.

Some people actually said we could never go there.

When Joe began his mission, NASA was just being formed

and space travel was still a thing of the future.

His jump was part of a research programme called Project Excelsior.

I wasn't interested in skydiving,

I wasn't interested in setting records.

I was interested in getting escape systems for pilots and astronauts.

I never get tired of watching the footage.

-It's incredible.

-I don't either.

-It's just incredible.

Oh, you know, it was the most significant thing

to happen in my life, that parachute jump was.

It's just as vivid in my mind today as it was the day I did it.

On 16th August 1960,

Joe left earth on a mission to see if a pilot could survive

an emergency bailout from the edge of space.

His every word was recorded for research.

What I have here really is a transcript

and this is what I said.

I said, "Overhead it's black, probably because of the polarization.

"Beneath me I can see the clouds. Quite fantastic."

The balloon carried Joe 19 miles above the earth.

It's just a beautiful, beautiful setting.

But then all of a sudden you realise that it's hostile. VERY hostile.

As he was preparing to jump, Joe made a terrifying discovery...

..he had a hole in one of his gloves.

My hand started swelling twice it's normal size.

I was really distressed.

I thought, "Well, if I tell the ground that I have this problem,

"they're going to make me abort."

But I was there as a test pilot,

and my job now was to jump.

I took a deep breath...

I stood up, moved to the door...

I said "Lord, take care of me now."

"Awfully bright. Cold in my legs.

"Can't get my breath."

Joe ignored the pain in his hand

and recorded everything he could feel and see as he fell.

I said, "Gosh, I'm not accelerating very fast,"

cos you have nothing to define speed.

There's no signposts going by, there's nothing visual at all.

In fact, Joe was falling at 614 mph,

just short of the speed of sound.

"70,000. Beautiful.

"Hit it in 35 secs.

"60,000. 50,000."

The further I fell, the happier I got,

because I knew I was going back down to a safer environment.

And that's a nice thought.

At 18,000 feet, after a four-and-a-half minute freefall,

Joe's chute opened.

"Oh, gee, that sure feels good, that cold air.

"Ah, boy. Thank you, God, thank you.

"Thank you for protecting me during that long descent. Thank you, God."

Joe's injured hand eventually healed.

The data from his freefall helped develop a parachute escape system

used by high-altitude pilots.

Now, Joe has to train Felix to do what he did,

only faster and further.

It was the highlight of my life.

Until I have to beat Felix's new record.

And I know how to do it now, cos they've got all the equipment.

I don't know if Felix told you, but I'm his backup.

If he breaks his leg or something

I'm going to be his backup for the jump.

It's not commonly known,

but, uh, that's the agreement that Felix and I have.

I don't ever want to see this like this again.

You stretch your lines out.

From now on, I don't want to see a cord like this.

C'mon now, we're better than that.

Back at mission headquarters,

Art and the team are struggling with the capsule.

Three, two, one.

-Woo!

-APPLAUSE

We'll see what the load cell says.

Even simple tests hit problems.

The sensor's messed up.

This project is so mentally, physically, intense...

COMPUTER CHIMES

..a lot of my crew is convinced I'm trying to kill them.

The capsule's engineering is more complicated

than anyone could have predicted.

The project is falling behind schedule

and Red Bull's budget has trebled to nearly £10 million.

Engineering's a process of discovery

and we discover things take longer, or are more complex...

It sends over a project manager from Austria to whip the team into shape.

We're still processing information...

We discovered that we need another electrical engineer

and a technician, which we don't have right now.

'It's just two different worlds colliding.'

How can a marketing person

help somebody managing an engineering project?

We can't necessarily hire somebody to do the job

if we don't have information.

It's their money. Red Bull can move in and take over,

but they can't speed it up.

Red Bull insists there can be no more delays.

I hate standing up early. LAUGHTER

Which is not early for most people,

but eight o'clock to me is like the middle of the night.

Felix's training in the pressure suit begins at a facility

used by the military to simulate conditions on the edge of space.

Overseeing the test is Joe's colleague, Mike Todd.

'It's really a training exercise for Felix.'

He has a limited suit experience

and the more experience we can get him in the suit,

the more confident he's going to be at altitude.

Sir, whenever you're ready, go ahead and reach up to the top

and bring your visor down slowly.

The suit's flexibility is still causing Felix concern.

Now he'll find out what it's like working in it for several hours.

'I've seen people struggle with pressure suits.'

'You're in your own little environment,

'it's a little plastic bubble,

'and you've always got something touching your skin some place

'which reminds you that you are.'

He's coming up.

Felix is depressurised to 76,000 feet -

way beyond the Armstrong Line.

It's getting hot in here, Tom. It's getting hot in here.

The water bubbling

is what would happen to his blood without protection.

The higher you go, the more the suit inflates,

so it's getting harder to move.

Plus your neck ring is lifting your head.

-INTERCOM:

-Everything looks good. How are you doing?

It really hurts my stomach.

Got stomach pain now.

'It's getting hot and cold inside your body.'

You can feel how you start sweating.

Your respiration rate has definitely changed.

'You feel claustrophobic, you know?

'I was really close to telling the guys, "Hey, get me out of this suit.

'"I can't deal with that any more."

'I was really fighting against it, you know?

'Fighting against my own fear, fighting against my own mind.'

'Everybody's counting on you.'

Everyone thinks you're a really cool guy, you can deal with it,

and, I mean, I have to accomplish a jump from 130,000ft,

breaking the speed of sound,

and I can't even stand being in the suit on the ground.

Do we have experience from other pilots? What do they say?

Sure. They do feel more and more confident,

the more and more they do it, but ah, it's a learning curve.

And you're getting it.

Felix's anxiety about the suit

brings back uncomfortable memories for Mike Todd.

40 years ago, he worked with another civilian

attempting to jump from extreme altitude.

Nick Piantanida was a 33-year-old skydiver

who had dreams of beating Joe's record.

Nick was going at 125,000 feet.

David Clark supplied him with a pressure suit

and we supplied him with a parachute.

Didn't quite have the backing that we have on this project,

nor did he have the experience.

Like Felix, Nick had never worked in a pressure suit.

Despite intense training, he never felt comfortable in it.

On 1st May, 1966, he took off in his balloon.

'Testing, 1, 2, 3.

'1, 2, 3.'

A recording of his communication with mission control has survived.

Two hours into his ascent, something went terribly wrong.

'Visor...'

'What was that, Nick?'

'Emergen...'

Emergency, cut him off.

He was probably up around 50,000 feet and some way or another,

the visor was either opened accidentally or intentionally,

we really don't know.

The people on the ground

immediately cut the balloon away from the gondola.

By the time they got to him, they found him

outside of the gondola with the visor partially open.

Nick was in a coma caused by hypoxia -

a lack of oxygen to the brain.

He died four months later.

'Am...I the next one who fails?'

'I'm 40 years old, and I want to get older, you know?'

Good.

All right, let's go.

The scientists want to analyse the aerodynamics of Felix in flight.

It's the kind of low-altitude jump that Felix is used to...

..but wearing the suit, even unpressurised,

makes it a challenge.

It's like watching a hawk in flight.

I deal with aircraft,

and we make machines that do certain flight dynamics.

In this case, the machine is Felix.

At this altitude, Felix falls at around 100 miles an hour.

Jumping from 24 miles up, he'll be in a near-vacuum.

The lack of resistance means he'll just keep accelerating.

Faster than a jumbo jet after 25 seconds.

Moments later, faster than a .45 calibre bullet.

And after 35 seconds, he'll exceed 700 miles an hour.

As he passes through the sound barrier,

the team want Felix to be in the delta position,

tracking head down.

They think this is will be the safest position to go supersonic.

But it's a theory that has never been tested.

We're putting Felix into a condition that really has never been done

and has never been documented for sure,

so we don't know what happens to the body at the speed of sound.

What they do know is when an object like a plane goes supersonic,

it is catching up with and pushing through its own sound waves.

In early jets, this caused extreme vibration.

No-one knows what it will do to Felix.

As he pushes closer to the sound barrier,

he may potentially have parts of his body that are supersonic

while other parts of his body are not.

You end up with a vibration

that could cause physical problems,

because your body is very

susceptible to vibration and wave patterns,

so if you get the wrong pattern,

you can cause internal damage to organs.

We've created computer models

trying to see what we think is going to happen,

but after doing all the math,

it's still a guess.

The test jumps help Felix feel safer in the suit.

But back on the ground, the more research the team does,

the more risks they have to deal with.

Yeah.

So what's your preference right now?

Is it feet first or head first?

He wants to go head first.

Just to slide up to the door...

The latest is a high-altitude phenomenon called flat spin,

something Joe experienced on one of his early jumps.

'When I was freefalling, all of a sudden'

I had this violent, uh...

rotation.

And it was so violent, I could not pull my arms in,

I couldn't do anything, I was just...paralysed.

Joe's camera captured the violence of his spin.

Matter of fact, I spun at 120 rpm.

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 we've got to accomplish today, obviously...

Art is back in charge.

And his team are back working together.

My job is a hard job to fill.

I guess that's job security in some ways.

I've got an incredible amount of emotional and mental endurance.

We lost about six weeks in the turmoil there.

We've got to make up for that time.

-Let's go from here. You'll go from that split right there.

-Hey-hey!

Three more times and we've got it.

We're working together, the shop's working well.

We're getting things done.

It feels like we're back on track as far

as it feels like we're back on track as far as being a team.

-Looks pretty good.

-Progress! Progress. It's good.

The project is two years late and £9 million over budget,

but at last it has a capsule ready to be tested.

Now all it needs is a pilot.

Felix is back in training.

And that means he has to

confront his anxieties about freefalling in the suit.

This time, he's jumping with it pressurised.

This is supersmall. This really sucks. Let's put the shoes...

I don't want to wear the helmet before I have shoes on.

Mike, put the helmet away.

I think Felix probably feels a little bit of anxiety,

you know, everything's, coming together.

Now it becomes more upon his performance and less upon

maybe the science team

so he's more and more in the limelight

Hold on a second. Hands away. I can't work with this ... .

Felix is going to 28,000 feet.

He's never jumped from higher

and he's facing the restriction of a pressurised suit.

This is the most extreme freefall he's ever done.

Joining him is Luke Aikens.

At these altitudes, everyone needs to wear an oxygen mask.

As Felix completes final checks, Luke,

in the foreground, takes off his mask.

He leaves the plane and hangs on waiting for Felix.

But Felix isn't ready.

Luke doesn't know it,

but the lack of oxygen means his brain is shutting down.

He's going hypoxic and it means he's losing his grip.

Suddenly he falls..

Luke is effectively unconscious and falling to earth at 160mph.

Felix is confused and jumps out after him.

The team has no idea of the drama unfolding above them.

Luke needs to come round. His parachute won't open automatically.

-Can you see them?

-Yup.

Just seconds from the ground, Luke regains consciousness and pulls his chute.

How did it go?

I don't remember jumping out.

You don't remember jumping out?

I remember giving Felix thumbs up I the door,

I climbed out and then I was in freefall looking for Felix. Did we leave together?

-No, you were...

-I just went, right? That's what I thought I did.

Luke said he didn't even remember jumping out.

I was out of it...

He took his face mask off.

You usually don't jump from altitudes like this.

Everyone talks about the hypoxia and the effects of it

and how it comes on and you think everything's fine and it's not.

I'm losing all my flexibility.

In an emergency situation, it becomes scary.

Felix is shaken by Luke's near miss.

The suit is blown up and I can't move.

He's focusing his anger on the suit,

convinced he can't jump safely in it.

It's not moving in this direction, so it's like I can't see it.

So I'm not jumping in it anymore. This thing is crap.

Felix forces the team to abandon testing altogether.

I'm very disappointed. What we thought was working OK

and was going to be fine is suddenly not OK anymore.

We're going to have to go back and think about what we're doing.

Felix walks out on the mission and catches the first flight home.

It sometimes feels like, I can't do it. It's just too much.

There's a lot of stuff that has never been done before

and I don't have a lot of time to prepare myself for stuff like this.

Like in a suit, I mean pilots have a couple of thousand hours

in that suit - I just have 20.

Just having the suit on my body, feeling it,

the smell and everything makes me kind of anxious,

I'm sitting there like, I don't feel good today.

I'm not sure, I don't like the suit today. I'm telling myself, hey,

c'mon, tough it out, you have to go through this because it's getting closer.

This is the year that we have to deliver

and know you're having a problem wearing the suit?

But I couldn't stand it so I told Mike, I opened my visor again,

get me out of the suit. I just can't do it today.

Red Bull offers Felix professional help.

Imagine that you are now in the room where the tests are.

You see the oxygen mask.

You see the mask, you smell it,

you know you can cope with it.

We're kind of second-guessing what's going on in Felix's head,

and whether it's the fear of the jump of the fear of the suit

or just the fear of possibly failing at something.

But there's something going on in his head that he has

to get a hold of.

This shouldn't be something that you have to talk somebody into doing.

You're going to get someone hurt if you do.

It has been six months

since Felix's anxiety in the suit ended his training.

The engineers are now in the final stage of their work.

They just need to test the capsule under pressurised conditions.

Check location of all four parachute handles.

But Felix has refused to return from Austria.

OK, the outside is 20,600ft...

The team have been forced to bring in a substitute for the test.

The test pilot that we have, Rob Rowe, is a real pro

and, ah, we have a lot of advantages of having him doing it,

because of his professionalism.

Rob is a charm to work with,

he never complains about anything, he's very easy going.

He considers himself more of a tool for the project.

News of the team's progress has reached Felix.

I saw the video of when Rob was in the chamber in Brooks,

and I got so jealous just watching him.

Because he is in my suit. This is my suit.

This is my spacecraft. Everything was developed for me.

And just seeing him in the suit, sitting in my capsule,

playing with all the buttons and stuff made me start thinking,

like, hey, I mean, I lost a whole programme.

'I have to find a solution.'

Felix is running out of time.

He steps up his personal training.

I'm working on my fitness and my mental skills.

I'm doing a lot of scuba diving,

because it's very similar to wearing that suit.

If I can handle this, I can also handle the suit.

But Felix's team is losing confidence in him.

He had the opportunity to train properly,

he just never took advantage of it.

He needs to be in the suit.

He needs to be part of the team.

You need to be dedicated to do this.

And if you're not dedicated, you've got no business being here.

This is something I want so bad

and I'm willing to go that extra mile to reach that goal.

And if they don't believe I can do it,

that even gives me a lot more motivation.

A year has passed since Felix halted his training.

Everything is now ready for the final jump.

Except him.

He finally returns to face the team - and the suit.

The capsule already demonstrated that it's capable of doing the job.

It's already been tested and stamped and approved.

Now it's Felix's turn to get stamped and approved.

Everybody's out there. Everybody's fired up, so it's kind of cool.

This is a complete rehearsal of the capsule's ascent to 125,000ft.

It's a final test of the technology, and of Felix.

We've got cold temperature, we have low pressures,

we have a pressure suit involved.

It's as close as we can get to the actual flight

without taking off the ground.

To simulate the exact conditions of the real jump,

Felix is locked inside the suit for four hours.

Can you read me, Felix?

Attaboy. How's your cabin doing?

The team watch his every move.

The last time I was putting that helmet on,

just the smell of the rubber made me feel so bad.

This time, everything is totally different.

It's still the same smell, but it's related to something else.

It's not my enemy anymore.

You're doing great, Felix.

The instrumentation looks great, you're doing good. Keep it up!

I think that the biggest link that I created is that

where you're going to go - normally you should not be there.

But as soon as you wear that suit, that allows you to be there.

That's the only way to survive in that hostile environment.

And just by thinking about that changes the whole picture.

Whatever was there, he's resolved,

I think we're all not only impressed but amazed that he turned it around.

180 degree change.

He's dedicated and motivated and he'll do a good job.

Felix has proved he has what it takes to get safely

to the edge of space.

Now all he needs to do...

is jump.

Preparations for launch are underway.

And the world's media arrives in New Mexico.

It has taken £18 million and years of hard work,

but the team are ready for take-off.

I've been working four years on this project,

I've been waiting 52 years for someone to beat my record.

It's been a long journey.

We're delighted that we're finally at the final step.

Felix himself has come a long way,

he had no pressure suit experience at all at the beginning of this.

And now he is very confident in a pressure suit.

So I'm very proud of him.

The team prepares for a launch after sunrise.

They send up weather balloons to check the wind speed.

My biggest fear of the entire thing

is getting the balloon off the ground.

It's going to be 750ft tall,

so that's about three-quarters the size of the Eiffel Tower.

Conditions to launch this type of balloon have to be perfect.

Joe will be directing Felix from Mission Control.

He will talk him through each stage of the mission.

I'm sitting there, empathising with him.

And when he jumps, I'm jumping with him.

I've done it myself

and I know exactly what he's going through.

Wind speeds are perfect.

The race is on to inflate the balloon before the weather changes.

Joe, this is Felix in the capsule, do you read me?

I read you very loud, how do you read me?

But there's a problem with the radio.

-1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

-..in the capsule, do you read me?

Felix, I can read you five-square, but you're obviously not reading me.

It takes more than half an hour to fix.

We need to switch over to radio two.

We need him to hurry up or we're going to run out of time.

The weather window is closing fast.

Get out the door, let's go!

OK, helium good, let's start.

We got to press on. We're way behind schedule!

The wind is beginning to rise.

I gotta tell you,

the wind is blowing this balloon all over creation!

Felix, the wind's came up. We'll have to abort.

No way.

Sorry to tell you.

This is going to be a painful mission debrief.

The team's mistakes have cost them one of their two balloons.

And the confidence of their pilot.

We've got to figure out what the issues were

as far as the radio comm, cos with the switch...

-My radio comm?

-It wasn't intentional.

-It just happened?

-Yeah.

In such an operation as this, things just happen?!

We're looking at what we need to be better organised...

Now we're down to one balloon.

We have to have the right conditions.

So what's the plan?

Right now, Don's looking at weather.

Next step is figure out the day.

The team will have to wait four days for another chance.

'You have to start up your system again

'and think through the process, and then it's not going to happen,'

then you have to do it all over again. It's just exhausting,

so, I don't know how much more I can do this, you know.

So, I really hope this is going to happen tonight.

Hello, Eva.

-How are you? Alles gut!

-Alles gut.

Felix, do you read me?

Read you loud and clear, sir.

We've got to get closer to going.

You were born ready, Felix.

This time, the team is on schedule.

But with only one balloon, there is no room for error.

We're all with you, buddy.

Standing by, Joe, ready to go.

Stand by and get ready for your trip to space.

We are go for launch!

-Oh, beautiful!

-Beautiful, wow!

Look at it go!

-CHEERING

-Release!

Felix, you're on the way to space.

Rock'n'roll! Thank you so much, guys.

And you're going up just great.

Felix, you're going up at 1,200ft per minute. Right on track.

Everything's looking good, you're doing great on the cabin.

And everything is green.

We know you will, Felix, we've got confidence in you.

That's a good view of the airfield down there.

You've passed about 30,000, you're doing 100mph.

And you're moving across New Mexico.

100 miles an hour. Really?

Actually, 112 right now, you're flat moving out.

Just before Felix passes into the deadly atmosphere

above the Armstrong line,

he makes an alarming discovery.

Phil, check your monitor. Phil, check your monitor.

"Phil, check your monitor" is Joe's emergency code.

We have a problem, we have a problem.

The television signal from the control room

is cut to allow Felix to talk openly.

Face plate heat is all the way up...

The millions watching at home see nothing of what follows.

If Felix has no face-plate heat, his visor will keep fogging up.

If he can't see the horizon, or his instruments, he can't jump safely.

We have a choice -

to continue up a little bit and see if it gets better

as you get lots of cold, or abort.

What do you think we should do?

I think we're seeing face-plate heating...

I don't see it fogging up.

Here's the problem - he thinks he doesn't have face plate.

It's his own perception,

and if he doesn't trust that he doesn't have face plate,

he's not a safe person and he probably wants to abort.

Mike, I want you to have our helicopter be in position -

we might have to cut him down.

We have an emergency here, and they should be ready to act.

As Felix rises above 80,000 feet,

the team need to reassure him that the visor will work when he jumps.

If he didn't have face-plate heating,

he'd be fogged up completely.

OK, Felix, here's what we think we should do.

He has to unplug his visor from the capsule power

allowing it to be powered by the pack on his chest.

But that could cut his communication to mission control -

and he may never get it back.

Are you going to go for an umbilical disconnect?

Yeah, he's going to the bathroom.

It's a good time to do it.

Felix has now risen past Joe's altitude of 102,000 feet,

but he faces a serious dilemma.

if he carries on, he may have no sight and no contact with his team.

Abort, and he may never get another chance.

He needs to hurry up and find out if it's going to work or not

so we know if we're pressing on to 128.

Felix, are you good there?

Felix decides to risk it.

OK, do you understand the procedures?

If you thumbs up, we keep going, thumbs down, we cut you loose.

Roger. Go ahead, Felix, and good luck and God bless you.

Can you hear me, Felix?

Felix, I'm reading you loud and clear too.

We have good communications...

Plugged into the chest pack, he still has communication.

Hold your breath

and let's see if we get the condensation again, Felix.

Hold your breath and let's see if we get condensation.

Felix, it appears as if it's dissipating

while you've got your breath held -

is that what you're seeing?

I think that means that it's working.

How you doing, Felix? Hanging in there, buddy?

Felix is going to jump.

The world is allowed to watch once more.

OK, confirm you're ready to start the res check.

OK, here we go, Felix! Item one.

Depress the suit, reinstall hose and cover.

Suit is depressurised, hose and cover are installed.

Attaboy!

Activate suit and chest-pack cameras.

Suit and chest-pack cameras are on.

Verify face seal tight.

Verify face seal is tight.

Move seat to the forward position.

Seat is in the forward position.

OK, we're getting serious now, Felix.

Depressurise the capsule to 40,000 feet

and confirm pressure suit inflation.

Confirmed, the suit is pressurised.

Depressurise the cabin to ambient altitude.

There it is! There's the world out there.

Move seat to the rear capsule.

Lift legs into the door threshold.

In position at the threshold.

Glide the seat forward.

Release seatbelt.

Attaboy. That's good. OK. Stand up on the exterior step.

Keep your head down.

Release the helmet tie-down strap.

And our guardian angel will take care of you.

FELIX BREATHES HEAVILY

WIND WHOOSHES

Is he...? What is he doing?

He's spinning, isn't he?

Felix has just gone supersonic.

But he's lost control.

Gosh darn.

APPLAUSE AND WHOOPING

Woo-hoo-hoo!

1 minute 30 seconds, and stable as a rock.

INDISTINCT

Felix, are you calling me?

Keep talking, Felix, keep talking.

Three minutes' freefall. Three minutes' freefall.

Felix, you're at the coldest altitude.

The further you fall, the warmer it's going to get.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Felix, we're so proud of you. You did absolutely fabulously.

Absolutely fabulous. I couldn't have done any better myself.

WHOOPING AND CHEERING

Yes!

Oh, my God.

That was so scary you cannot believe.

I think I just lost 1,000 of weight off my shoulders.

I wanted to hug the whole world.

Come on, buddy.

Without this guy, I couldn't have done it.

Yes!

Colonel.

It had a wonderful conclusion. I am now a has-been.

But a famous one!

THEY LAUGH

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd