"I feel super light right now, like I just lost 20,000 pounds of pressure off my body," Baumgartner told USA TODAY after his record dive to Earth on Sunday. "I can't tell you what it feels like to feel that much pressure to be perfect in front of the whole world."
But perfect he was Sunday in wrapping up a five-year, privately funded space supersonic free fall that broke records for altitude and speed, then parachuting into the New Mexico desert.
Baumgartner, 43, rocketed head first for more than four minutes before deploying his chute. He hit 833.9 mph, or Mach 1.24, breaking the speed of sound on the same day that in 1947 test pilot Chuck Yeager did it in a rocket with wings.
"Doing this on Oct. 14 was pure luck," said Baumgartner, who had almost jumped last week before wind gusts outside Roswell, N.M., scrubbed the launch. "But it was a great honor to break the sound barrier outside of a plane on this day. I don't know where Chuck Yeager is, but he is one man I'd like to meet."
Although Sunday's jump seemed to go off flawlessly, there were moments of genuine tension. The most dicey: an ominous-looking flat spin that Baumgartner went into around 90 seconds into the descent. It was a situation that could have led to a loss of consciousness or worse.
But Baumgartner said he felt no danger.
"I never felt like I was going to die, but I did think that if I don't get myself out of this (spin) I won't break the speed of sound," he said. "That would have been a big disappointment because I just don't have any energy left to do this again."
Getting out of the spin proved to be a trial-and-error experience in a sensory deprivation tank, he said, "like swimming without feeling the water."
Because the suit was pressurized, Baumgartner couldn't feel the air rushing past him. At one point, he stuck an arm out, but the spin got worse. He tried the other, and things slowly stabilized.
"It was all way harder than I anticipated, and for about 10 seconds there I wasn't sure how I was going to get out of it," he said.
It didn't help that waiting on the ground in the program's steel and glass mission control building were Baumgartner's family and girlfriend. At first, he says he tried to dissuade his mother from coming. "But you know," he said, "your mom says she's coming and that's that."
He said he tried to warn them that Roswell might not be the most glamorous of destinations; it's a simple western outpost with a lot of chain eateries and hotels all sporting drawings of aliens given the city's claim to fame as an allegedly landing spot for a UFO in 1947.
"But maybe I scared them off too much, because they really liked it," said Baumgartner. "They're having fun, and think the people are really nice."
Next up for the Austrian is a predictable press tour. After that, he swears you won't hear much from him after this record-breaking jump called the Red Bull Stratos project, sponsored by the well-known Austrian energy drink company.
"I'm retired from the daredevil business," he said. "I want to find a nice decent job as a helicopter pilot. I'll fight fires and rescue people. No e-mails, no phone calls."
There is one scenario that could get him back into skydiving: a Felix Baumgartner of the future.
"I could see doing what Joe did for me for someone who 40 years from now comes to me and says, 'Hey, I want to break your records, and I'd like your help,'" Baumgartner said. "I've done a lot of things in a business where you're lucky to stay alive, so when the time comes, I'll be happy to pass my knowledge along and help someone else. I sensed there were a lot of schoolchildren around the world watching what I was doing today. Maybe one of them will be next."
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