And Then He Just Jumped

Felix Baumgartner stepped out of a balloon 43 kilometers above the Earth in 2012 and fell. The whole Red Bull Stratos operation was engineered down to the decimal point—the freefall speed, the parachute deployment, the landing zone. He broke the sound barrier on the way down and became the first person to do so without jet propulsion, which is the kind of fact that sounds absurd in retrospect. But what I remember from watching the footage was the moment before the jump, him standing at the open door with nothing below but air and distance, the kind of moment that requires a complete evacuation of doubt. How do you get to that? How do you convince yourself absolutely, with no hedging, that this will work? I think it’s the same mind that gets you to build anything that’s never been built before.