The phrase "one giant leap for mankind" may have been coined by Neil Armstrong on a special day in July 1969, but we think it applies equally well to Alan Eustace, a man who recently leapt from the stratosphere, plunged 26 miles and landed a living legend.
No fear of heights for Mr. Eustace
Want to know what the view is like from space as you're plummeting rapidly toward Earth? Well Alan Eustace is pretty much the dude to ask. A 57-year-old senior VP at Google, Eustace had one clear advantage on his side before he even began the jump: science. As an esteemed computer scientist, Eustace was able to harness his on-the-job skill sets in order to give life to his literally out-of-this-world extracurricular activity.
According to The New York Times, Eustace worked with a tech team to develop a specially-designed suit and attachment that would prevent any major mishaps as he was carried, by a massive helium-filled balloon, to a height of over 25 miles. Since the ascent was much longer than the descent, Eustace used that time to appreciate everything that was around him as he approached the peak of the stratosphere.
"It was amazing," he said. of that moment "It was beautiful. You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before."
A video showing Eustace's rise and (successful) fall confirms just how amazing the trip was. As Eustace dangles from the balloon contraption, GoPro mounted in-suit, we see the ground fade into a single mass, eventually enveloped by the deep blue airglow of the morning light. While the trip up took two hours, it only took 15 minutes for Eustace to come down, and as The Verge pointed out, his descent gained speeds of around 800 miles per hour. Eustace's journey was reported by onlookers to have emitted a sonic boom, but this was not something that Eustace could hear due to the construction of the suit he was wearing.
An independent endeavor
One might think that someone working at as fun-loving a company as Google would approach their employer about perhaps sponsoring their space-dive. But this was something that Eustace chose not to do, instead treating the project as an independent endeavor, one that was three years in the making. One clear benefit of working on the project independently is that Eustace didn't have to deal with a flood of publicity. In fact, when he did his dive, there was no fanfare at all, since he'd planned the whole thing very quietly.
The benefit of this quietness is that Eustace got to then experience his dive without any pressure – except, of course, the literal pressure of sky dropping beneath him at 800 miles per hour. But we gather that's something he enjoyed quite a bit – and soon, thanks to his GoPro footage, we will too. Eustace's journey from the far reaches of the sky should be an inspiration to anyone with a desk job.
