It is billed as a small jump for a man…a big jump for humanity: The Le Grand Saut.

Skydiver Michel Fournier is back in gear and stepping up his campaign to jump — perhaps this month — from the stratosphere at an altitude of about 130,000 feet (40,000 meters) above the plains of Saskatchewan, Canada.

Thwarted in early attempts by technology snags, bad weather and funding, the plan for this 62-year old sky/space diver is to set no less than four world records:

– Altitude record for freefall
– Altitude record for human balloon flight
– Time record for longest freefall
– Speed record for fastest freefall

This grand Fournier fall from high-altitude balloon, wrapped in high-tech skydiving gear, is meant to contribute to the development of future technologies and the safety of stratospheric flight.

Fournier has more than 8,500 jumps to his credit, and over a hundred from very high altitudes - all leading to his “Big Jump” to show that a man can walk home from space.

If money, technology, stick-to-itness and downright guts converge, you can keep an eye on the daring drop at:

http://www.legrandsaut.org/index.php?Message=main〈=eng

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Space & Astronomy, Technology, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.