The space jump YouTube Video, watched by over 8 million viewers live, showed Felix Baumgartner's daring and successful attempt to break the speed of sound. The video showed in the distance Baumgartner spinning in circles during the freefall. A new video released of Felix Baumgartner's head camera showed what that "brutal" spin looked like.
"It felt like a flat spin," he said. "I had a lot of pressure in my head, but I felt I could regain control so we could go after the sound barrier. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that I'd lose consciousness."
The footage shows his leap from the balloon 128,100 feet, or 24 miles, above New Mexico, and his free fall descent as a person from Mission Control narrates his speed.
"In that situation, when you spin around, it's like hell and you don't know if you can get out of that spin or not," he said. ''The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought I'd just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up."
Baumgartner, however, made the jump happen successfully and managed to control the spin for a steady descent to Earth, as he broke the sound barrier. (See additional video below)
"There was a time I really thought I was in trouble. I had to decide to fight all the way down and I finally got stable. That spin became so violent it was hard to know how to get out of it. I was able to get it under control and break the speed of sound. I could feel myself break the speed of sound. I could feel the air building up and then I hit it."
"Let me tell you -- when I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble. You don't think about breaking records anymore, you don't think about gaining scientific data -- the only thing that you want is to come back alive," Baumgartner said during a media conference.
