00:00Did you know that a man jumped from space and broke the sound barrier?
00:03In the midst of the Cold War, the US Air Force had a desperate mission.
00:08How could pilots and astronauts survive a fall from the stratosphere?
00:13They chose Joseph Kittinger, a captain with nerves of steel.
00:16Their task: to climb higher than any human before and jump.
00:20Kittinger ascended in a helium balloon to over 31,300 meters.
00:23The temperature was 70 N and the atmosphere so thin that, without a suit, he would have suffocated in seconds.
00:30After a few minutes of preparation, he stood on the edge of the capsule, gave a military salute, and jumped out.
00:36In just seconds, he accelerated to over 990 kilometers per hour, breaking the sound barrier with his own body.
00:43A glove tore and his hand began to swell painfully.
00:46At over 20,000 meters, the air began to slow his fall.
00:49He opened his parachute just in time and landed safely in the New Mexico desert.
00:55Kittinger's jump helped develop technology for future astronauts.
00:59His record stood for 52 years until 2012, when Felix Baumgartner made an even greater jump with Kittinger as his wingman.
01:06adviser.
01:07What do you think? Bucura, leave it in the comments.
