View Single Post
Moogs
Hates the Infotainment
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
 
2012-10-15, 18:01

All right so I might be partly doofus too. Apparently the checklist guy was Kittinger, the former record holder. But I stand by my comments that he didn't seem particularly regimented or serious about it, even fumbling over his own words and issuing the wrong description at one point / being corrected.

One possible explanation that is surprising: Baumgartner suffers from panic attacks in these space suits Chalk up the "extra cahones points" on that one for going ahead with it anyway. As if he required any after yesterday's awesomeness.

Quote:
Although he had no trouble jumping off buildings and bridges, and soaring across the English Channel in a carbon-fiber wing, he found himself suffering panic attacks when forced to spend hours inside the pressurized suit and helmet. At one point in 2010, rather than take an endurance test in it, he went to an airport and fled the United States. With the help of a sports psychologist and other specialists, he learned techniques for dealing with the claustrophobia.

One of the techniques Mr. Baumgartner developed was to stay busy throughout the ascent. He conversed steadily with Mr. Kittinger, a former fighter pilot whose deep voice exuded the right stuff as he confidently went through a 40-item checklist rehearsing every move that Mr. Baumgartner would make when it came time to leave the capsule.
I don't know though; I'm used to this guy's approach to mission control:



I guess there can be only one.

...into the light of a dark black night.
  quote