Baumgartner and Kittinger

That's Baumgartner on the left. He's shaking hands in January of this year with Joseph Kittinger, who a half-century ago came exceedingly close to what Baumgartner will be attempting. As an officer in the U.S. Air Force, Kittinger was involved in very high-altitude research that helped pave the way for manned space travel. Among those vertiginous research efforts was Project Excelsior, which sought to answer questions such as: Could someone escape from a high-flying aircraft or space capsule using a parachute? Could a person even survive at an extreme altitude?