Felix Baumgartner obituary: daredevil adventurer

Times

18-07-2025

On October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner took one small step and began falling from the fringes of space to Earth. Jumping from 128,000ft up, he hurtled downwards for more than four minutes before deploying his parachute, reaching a speed of 843mph — Mach 1.25.
Sixty-five years to the day since Chuck Yeager had first broken the sound barrier in an aircraft, the Austrian skydiver became the first person to go supersonic without the aid of a vehicle.
Baumgartner, who had 'Born to Fly' tattooed on his forearm, was always clear the whole death-defying enterprise was essentially a stunt, rather than undertaken to further science. It was sponsored — at a cost of £20 million — by Red Bull, the drinks company that had associated itself with extreme sports. Nevertheless, the feat required four years of planning, for the dangers were very real.
The aim was to better the free-fall record of 102,800ft established in 1960, at the start of the Space Age, by a US test pilot, Joe Kittinger. Fifty years on, he agreed to mentor Baumgartner, who would ascend 24 miles up into the stratosphere in a capsule attached to a helium-filled balloon 50 storeys high, its skin thinner than a sandwich wrapper.
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To survive the conditions, Baumgartner would have to wear a specially pressurised suit. Keen on publicity and emotionally volatile, he coped with being told that if something went wrong his blood could boil — the 'good news' was it would only take him 15 seconds to die — but found the suit claustrophobic. For six months he quit the project. Only film of his replacement wearing the suit spurred him into returning.
Bad weather at the launch site of the Roswell air base, New Mexico, scotched the initial date. Five days later, however, the sky was clear. For the first time in his career, Baumgartner's parents had come to watch him jump. He said his greatest fear was dying in front of his family.
During the ascent, Baumgartner felt he was developing a problem with his visor. All his mother, Ava, could do was silently pray. The issue was resolved and his worry that the capsule door would have frozen solid also proved unfounded. Standing 99,000ft higher than Everest, Baumgartner, whose childhood hero had been Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, slowly shuffled forward. 'I'm coming home,' he said.
Watched by a live YouTube audience of eight million, Baumgartner fell. The greatest danger was he might begin to spin uncontrollably, forcing all his blood into his skull and out through his eyeballs. To the horror of his team on the ground, he did indeed begin to revolve — there was a 20-second delay on the public feed in case of tragedy — but despite his terror he managed to stabilise himself. Over New Mexico, a sonic boom was heard.
When he was 5,000ft from the ground, Baumgartner opened his parachute and made a perfect landing. His mother wept with relief. 'Fearless Felix' had broken three records: the highest manned balloon flight; the highest altitude from which a man had free-fallen; and the first supersonic free-fall.
Two years later, a computer scientist working for Google, Alan Eustace, jumped from a higher altitude of almost 26 miles, although he used a drogue parachute to control his descent, so Baumgartner's speed record still stands.
Yet he was never tempted to try to regain his other mark. 'Of course I wouldn't do it again!' he said. 'Just because it's worked once, doesn't mean it would work again. I'll leave it to the next generation.'
Felix Baumgartner was born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1969. His father, also Felix, was a carpenter and later sold furniture. His son characterised him as a cautious person who did not encourage his two boys to take risks. Gerard, Felix's brother, became a chef.
The family lived next to the Russian consulate and Felix's first exploit was to dig a tunnel through to its garden so he could play on the swings there; he had excavated about 5ft before he was discovered. As long as he could recall, however, his dream was to fly. He only had to see a tree and he would climb its highest branch.
School was not for him and he left at 16. His father had a friend who was a skydiver, and reluctantly his parents gave Felix parachute lessons as a birthday present. He made his first jump at 17. The main chute failed to open — he never found out why — but his reserve deployed after seven rather tense seconds.
While doing National Service in the Austrian army, initially as a tank driver, Baumgartner learnt it had a parachute display team and he subsequently spent five years with them. After leaving the military he supported himself as a car mechanic, while determined to become a professional skydiver.
The obstacles to this, as a potential spectator sport, were that most of the action takes place out of sight, up in the air, and is largely hazard free. Baumgartner found the solution in the novel (and often prohibited) sport of base jumping, or parachuting at dangerously low heights from a fixed object such as a bridge.
In 1999, he leapt from what was then the world's tallest building, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. He also made what he claimed to be the world's lowest base jump, of about 90ft, from the hand of the statue of Christ the Redeemer that overlooks Rio de Janeiro. These stunts brought him to the notice of Red Bull, which was based near Salzburg.
Money was still tight, however. Lacking access to a wind tunnel, Baumgartner trained for his attempt to be the first person to skydive across the English Channel by tying himself to the roof of a speeding Porsche 911. In 2003, with a carbon-fibre wing strapped to his back, he jumped out of an aircraft 30,000ft above Dover, and landed near Calais 14 minutes later.
After the leap that made him famous, Baumgartner kept to his promise to renounce daredevilry. He had said that he might concentrate on raising adventurous children of his own, although in the event he did not have any, nor was he married. He is survived by his long-term partner, Mihaela Radulescu, a Romanian television presenter.
Although he did take part in the 24-hour road race at the Nürburgring in 2014, he concentrated on flying helicopters, both acrobatically and to help rescue people. He became known in Austria as well for his endorsement of populist political figures — he proposed that Hungary's premier, Viktor Orban, be awarded a Nobel prize — and for speaking out against immigration.
In 2012 he was fined €1,500 for slapping a Greek truck driver during a road-rage argument. After falling out with the tax authorities, he left Austria for Switzerland.
Like many who have gazed down on the Earth from above, Baumgartner's experience had made him conscious of its fragility. 'A lot of people talk about going to Mars,' he reflected. 'It doesn't make sense … We've already done a lot of damage here; we should take care of our own world.'
Felix Baumgartner, record-breaking skydiver, was born on April 20, 1969. He reportedly died of a heart attack while paragliding on July 17, 2025, aged 56