Daredevil Delayed In Hopes Of Setting World Skydiving Record Over Saskatchewan

Just days after Canadians helped land a spacecraft on Mars, this country could be party to yet another amazing first in the wild blue yonder. A French skydiver is planning to become the first person in history to plunge from the stratosphere by free falling some 40 kilometres to earth in a specially designed capsule.

The location for the record breaker: North Battleford, Saskatchewan

Michel Fourner is a 64-year-old adventurer who will use a helium-powered balloon pod to rise up some 40,000 metres – that’s about 130,000 feet – and plunge to the earth below, breaking four records at the same time.

Whether he succeeds or not depends a lot on the weather, which already scrubbed the attempt once on Monday morning. The event is now scheduled for Tuesday.

But either way, it won’t be for a lack of preparation. Fournier has been gearing up for the attempt for years and has tried – and failed – on previous occasions in both 2002 and 2003. The entire enterprise has already cost him $20 million.

He and his crew of experts hope the third time is the charm. “We have a better balloon now than we had before and that’s what caused us problems before,” explains launch manager Dale Sommerfeldt. “So we’re hoping this time will be a success.”

“We had to have a delay of two hours because of visibility. The winds were fine; however, we had too many clouds and we did not want to send the balloon up if we could not retrieve any images,” added spokeswoman Francine Gittins.

“Consequently, the wind picked up in the morning and so now the wind is too strong for the balloon to be inflated.”

“If you have too much gusts or too much wind, we’re not going to have control of that balloon and we need to have control,” Gittins said after the launch was scrubbed.

“We were kind of hoping the wind might come down, but we decided not to take any risks.”

How daring is this derring-do? Consider this: Fournier will be three times higher than a commercial jet and his launch height will be comparable to four Mount Everests stacked on top of each other. The former army paratrooper has already done more than 8,000 jumps but nothing like this.

Among the marks he could break: the fastest and longest free fall, the highest parachute jump and the highest balloon flight. But if all goes well, records are the only thing he’ll shatter. He’s confident that his specially built cocoon will keep him from harm as it swoops down at a stunning 15,000 kilometres an hour, breaking the sound barrier. His chute is expected to deploy at around 6,000 metres or just 3.75 miles above the earth.

The previous record holder is still alive and will be watching the project with interest. Joe Kittinger is 79 now. In 1960, as a much younger man, he leapt from a balloon at 31,000 metres above the earth, a quarter of the height his successor will attempt to reach.

He wishes Fournier a lot of luck. “What I told him from the very beginning was that it’s a very hostile environment needing elaborate protection and equipment and a good team,” he relates.

Photo credit: David Boily/AFP/Getty Images