Yesterday, on the anniversary of that supersonic breakthrough, an Austrian stuntman did basically the same thing - but without the plane.
As the amber of a desert sunrise faded to azure blue over New Mexico, Felix Baumgartner, a professional daredevil, strapped himself to a 50-storey-high balloon that would take him to the edge of space.
Hours later, he emerged from his capsule. He took a moment to survey the view the curvature of the earth, the patterns of continental weather systems. And then, from 128,097ft, or more than 38km up, he jumped into the record books.
Over the next few moments he demonstrated that a man in a $US200,000 pressurised suit can plunge through the stratosphere, accelerate to 1136km, free-fall for more than four minutes and live to tell the tale, speaking at a press conference. Preliminary readings also suggested that he had become the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.
As he fell through a near-vacuum, his handlers at mission control urged him to talk to them. It seemed, however, that Mr Baumgartner was left as speechless as his Earth-bound spectators. His silence was frightening: leading up to the attempt, he had battled panic attacks caused by bouts of claustrophobia in his suit. Ultimately, however, he achieved a set of landmarks unlikely to be outdone for generations. The previous free-fall record, of 102,800ft, had been set by Joe Kittinger, a US Air Force test pilot, at the dawn of the space age in 1960.
Mr Baumgartner, 43, accelerated from 0 to 1126kmh in less than 40 seconds, but at first he had no sense of motion. Mr Kittinger, 84, who acted as his mentor, described the sensation of jumping at such monumental, nearly airless altitudes as akin to "a state of suspended animation. No [sense of] acceleration, no movement, no noise, nothing. It was absolutely quiet, absolutely still, and absolutely horrifying".
As the air density increased closer to Earth, Mr Baumgartner slowed and stopped spinning, bringing forth cheers from his back-up team. He deployed his parachute at about 5000ft. Minutes later, he performed a perfect landing, triggering yet more applause. He had broken three records: the highest manned balloon flight; the highest altitude from which a man had free-fallen; the first supersonic free-fall.
The feat was truly death-defying. If his suit had malfunctioned, his blood might have boiled while millions watched on the internet. In short, for Red Bull, the drinks company that funded the venture, it was going to be one of the best, or worst, marketing stunts in history.
The day began with a series of nervous pre-dawn conferences between engineers, doctors and pilots responsible for avoiding disaster. Ultimately, the ascent included just one heart-stopping glitch, when a problem with Mr Baumgartner's visor risked aborting the mission.
"This is very serious," he told his handlers at mission control as he travelled upwards at close to 160kmh. "Sometimes it's getting foggy when I exhale."
For several agonising seconds, the technicians at mission control sat silent. At the request of Mr Kittinger, an audio feed from the capsule was shut off. Mr Baumgartner's mother, who had wept as her son ascended, was powerless to do anything but pray.
Then a small army of technicians scrambled to trouble-shoot the problem. When the time came, it was Mr Kittinger who talked "Fearless Felix" through the jump's final stages.
"Stand up on the exterior step but be sure to duck your head down as you go out that door," he said as his protege prepared to leap. As he paused on the ledge, Mr Kittinger added: "The rest is yours."
The jump organisers hoped to test whether parachuting from immense heights could prove a viable means of escape for the nascent commercial space industry. Those parsing the biometric data gathered during the mission included the US Air Force and Nasa. It was clear, however, that the objectives went beyond scientific discovery.
The mission was filmed by 20 cameras and generated global excitement, forcing the organisers to rebut claims that the primary objective was publicity. "This is a flight test programme, not a stunt," said Art Thompson, the project's technical director.
In Roswell, a flat dusty town best known as the site of a rumoured UFO landing in 1947, conditions had to be perfect. Last Tuesday, a gust of wind had twisted the giant balloon; the mission was abandoned and $US70,000 of helium was lost. The mission was left with just one back-up balloon. The hiatus that followed helped to highlight the scale of a stunt that was first dreamt of seven years ago. The balloon was the largest to have carried a man. The plastic from which it was made was a tenth of the thickness of a sandwich bag.
Mr Baumgartner, a former military parachutist who lives in Switzerland, was famous. In 2003, he became the first person to skydive across the English Channel. He also holds the record for the lowest base jump, 95ft, from the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. He plans to settle down to a quiet life - as a rescue helicopter pilot.
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