High Flying

This one is kinda old news, but after a conversation with my lead today I thought of it again.  My lead for the hardware I've been assigned to work is going to retire at the end of the year and I will be taking over as lead at that point - scary since I feel like I'm still playing catch up with everything I need to know.  So today he took me around to introduce me to some people that will help make my  job easier once he leaves.  During one of our conversations he mentioned that his first job out of college (in 1964) was with a company that was competing to make the space suits for the APOLLO missions!  The amount of knowledge and experience that this man has in the space industry is incredible.  So this made me think of modern day space suit development, which is a large part of what Felix Baumgartner's 24 mile record breaking free fall from space was testing.  The pressurized suit Felix wore is very much like what the astronauts wear when they perform EVA's (which by the way, an EVA also happened today..... check out the details here).  His free fall, which allowed him to be the first human to break the sound barrier outside of a vehicle, will allow space researchers to better design the next generation of NASA's space suits!  Watch the highlights from his death-defying jump in today's Increasing the Awesome video:

(top image from here)