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>> Good afternoon, everybody, welcome.
I'm glad to see everybody out on a pretty Friday afternoon.
So welcome to another in our innovation lecture series.
Today we have a very exciting program on tap
with this Red Bull Stratos team.
And we're really excited about what they're here to talk about.
Ellen started the week off with an All-Hands talking
about where JSC is going in the next era
of human exploration of space exploration.
And one of the things that's going to characterize
that is we're really looking for much more innovative,
collaborative approach to exploration.
And so this is the type of event that characterizes that kind
of approach, we're really pleased to have these guys here.
And the folks that are spearheading
that effort really are folks at the office
of the chief technologist at headquarters.
So I'm pleased to introduce
to you today our agency's deputy chief technology officer,
Jim Adams.
He'll come up and introduce our speakers.
[ Applause ]
>> Well, thanks, Douglas.
You know, they say
that imitation is the highest form of flattery.
One of the interesting things about NASA,
and sometimes I think we get a little jaded
by it is we do extreme things every day.
Whether it's trying to figure out how to manage fed traveller
or fill out your time card.
Seriously, the things that we do are always cutting-edge.
And I think the public expects that of us.
But what we're seeing now these days are the public taking it
upon themselves to become extreme, like NASA.
And so the things that we see are happening are imitations
of NASA.
That tells me we've got it right.
That we're looking forward to the future in the right sort
of way, that we're doing the right sorts of things.
And one of the really cool things that happened
that you all know about was the Baumgartner jump from --
they say the edge of space, it was like 24 miles.
But it was still extreme.
And I'm sure they'll tell us --
they think it's like 880 miles an hour was the top speed this
fellow made.
I think that that is a high form of flattery to NASA,
and at the same time we should applaud the work that they did
in order to get there in a way
that NASA probably wouldn't have.
So I think as we work together, we can learn things
from both them, and they can learn from us.
And that I think is the spirit of collaboration
that will take us into the next space age.
And JSC is well suited to be right at the forefront of that.
So with that, I think what I would do is introduce our
two speakers.
Why don't they both come up here.
We have Dr. Andy Walsh and Art Tompson.
I'll read their bios for you,
and then we'll just turn the whole time over to them.
There will be a period of Q and A after towards,
and then I think Douglas is going to come back and wrap up.
Dr. Andy Walsh is a native of Australia and has a Ph.D.
in applied bio mechanics and extensive coaching experience
in performance training, including the design
of a highly successful performance program
for the US Olympic ski and snowboard teams.
He game to Red Bull Stratos as a director of high performance
for Red Bull's global athlete development program,
where he works with hundreds of international athletes,
supervises a team
of industry-leading sports scientists, nutritionists,
bio mechanics experts and sports psychologists,
and develops elite sports performance models.
As performance manager for Red Bull Stratos,
Andy and his team helped Felix Baumgartner execute a perform
plan by encompassing both physical
and psychological readiness, and provide high performance,
direction, and support for the entire mission team.
Art Tompson, I guess that's stage left, right?
Possesses more than three decades of experience
in innovating leading-edge design,
and has produced major Milestones in aerospace history,
including the development of the B-2 stealth aircraft.
A California native, he studied engineering at University
of California, Los Angeles.
And attended the University of Laverne and Northrop University.
It was while working for Northrop Corporation
that he served on a team brainstorming ideas
for an aircraft that could avoid radar detection.
Their design would become the B-2 Spirit.
Art co-founded his own company,
Sage Cheshire Air Space Incorporated
to provide a wide range of aerospace needs
from initial design and engineering
to the finished product.
Art's creative thinking extends to other fields,
including producing tools, molds, digital products,
and more and more for clients from aerospace manufacturers
to movie producers for films like Batman and Robin,
for which Art and his team built the Batmobile.
That's awesome.
Did it go as fast as Felix.
As technical project director for Red Bull Stratos,
Art Thompson assembled and guided the extraordinary team
that designed, built, and tested the capsule
that protected Felix Baumgartner and ensured mission success.
So please join me in welcoming Andy and Art to the stage.
[ Applause ]
>> Well, thank you very much.
I must take Jim's comments there.
At Red Bull, we consider ourselves good at the extreme
in the action sports world, but to speak to you guys
who push the limits of the human and performance realm every day
in your business, it's a distinguished pleasure and honor
to be here today and speak in front of you.
And also on behalf of myself and Art,
I just want to preface the whole thing by saying
as with you guys, our project was the culmination
of a magnificent team of individuals, 200-plus on site,
globally several thousand people who activated the program
after it was successful.
Just want to recognize their contribution here today as well
as sort of give you the nod that we're just representing them,
and it's a pleasure to do that as well.
So the program today for us, we sort of toyed
around with a couple of ideas, and what we wanted
to start with, I think, speak a little bit
about the high performance platform
that Red Bull has in place.
I think that speaks to the culture of our organization,
and how our job in trying to manage excellence, how we try
and structure systems and processes to get the very best
out of people, how that lended itself perfectly to what Art
and his direction in the Stratos program was trying to achieve.
So forgive me, the engineers in the room,
I'm not going to be very technical.
Art will take care of that part.
But I wanted to speak a little bit more about the framework,
the processes, the platforms we use to set the whole thing up,
and maybe give you insight into our world.
So with that I thought I'd kick it off very quickly
with a short video, it's sort of an internal highlight reel,
but it will just give a sense of the sort of breadth
of activities that we're engaged in.
Maybe? Houston, we have a problem.
I was dying to say that.
I was dying to say that.
[Applause] here we go.
Sorry, I bet you get [Inaudible] out there.
I can't help myself.
>> Kept asking how you were going to do that.
[Music]
>> -- you're going to stand around and be safe
for your whole life, then you never really lived,
you're already dead.
[ Music ]
>> Riding a big wave like that is a pretty
indescribable feeling.
[ Music ]
>> -- Snoop Dogg, and this is Sound Class, so stay tuned.
[Music]
>> Red Bull, they've been trying to push boundaries, musically.
>> The MC in me wants to see, like,
who's going to be the sickest individual.
[ Music and singing ]
>> There's never a circumstance where there's no consequence.
[ Music ]
>> Fun stuff, huh?
And a big part of what we do is all about having fun.
So what you've got to consider too is the fact that in my role
as sort of managing the talent
in the organization is I've never before been amongst a
group of individuals with such an ability
to push beyond what is expected to be the norm,
to push their own limits, to defy what we want every day
to see in the normal population, and how they go along and push
to see and break records, do amazing things,
and really set et tone for the rest of us.
And interestingly enough, we have about 600 athletes
in our athlete portfolio in 185 different sports,
all of who are world class.
We have an amazing culture program, dancers, artists,
musicians, designers, numbering
in the hundreds, almost a thousand.
And from all those groups
and from all those individuals what we've been struggling
to understand is how they do what they do.
And so when we first started this program out we just set
up a platform where we could actually systematically look
at why they're successful at what they do and how they do it
so well, and bring that back and share it
with the rest of the portfolio.
So today I want to speak to a little bit about that,
with reference to Stratos.
And then as I said, Art will lead
into a more technical piece.
So really quickly, as a framework,
and I'll talk athletics at the beginning
because it's the easiest part, I think, for people to understand.
Typically, when you're trying to break a world record,
win a gold medal, become a world champion,
the models are fairly simple.
You may choose tennis or golf as your profession.
And the idea is that you typically
as a starting point you go out and you see what the rest
of the world at that point is doing.
Pretty straight-forward stuff.
You may model yourself a Venus or Tiger, you may want
to understand how they train, how much they're coaching,
what they eat, how they practice,
how much they practice, where they practice.
And that's what we call a baseline program.
And this was sort of the norm for many, many years.
When we started at Red Bull with this depth of talent we had
in our portfolio, it became very obvious very quickly
that this was an unprecedented opportunity
to broaden this sort of analysis.
So rather just framing in excellence based on models
in a chosen field or related field we just started to frame
up our models of excellence based on best in class
across any behavior or chosen skill set.
So for an athlete population, rather than looking
at other athletes, people in that field,
we started to broaden our sense of research, if you like,
to start to look beyond that.
So very simply, you know, creative --
creativity, innovation.
We're not going to talk to most of the athlete population
about how to improve that, even though it is a fundamental skill
of the best athletes in the world.
The best talent in the sporting field is highly creative,
is very innovative.
It redefines how on you understand that sport
to be played or demonstrated.
So we started tapping into our musical program,
and our culture program, and the musicians,
spirituality was a huge component of this,
understanding the ideas of presence and mindfulness,
how to be quiet in those really critical moments.
And again, we wouldn't look to athletes, per se,
or even musicians, we thought who's the best in class at that.
And obviously, the eastern philosophies gave us an amazing
framework there.
Performing under pressure, ability to execute
with zero room for error.
We have amazing relationships with the Department of Defense
and some of the special forces groups, we access their talent,
they access our talent, we access theirs.
And then the explorers, as you guys are obviously experts in,
they became a fundamental theme for us as well.
Understanding how those people who go beyond what is expected,
those people who see things that other people don't see
and then have the courage to back that thought with action
and try and understand that together and bring it all in.
This making sense?
So that's how our models are framed up now,
and that's what we're continually trying to understand
and continually adding data to.
Some is very highly quantitative,
some is very qualitative, and you'll see a bit today.
But -- so our model, let me go back, sorry.
Our model like look something like this,
for any given performance.
And this is again focused conceptually on athletics.
We would break out a model for any given chosen craft
or activity, any team, whatever it is we're trying to excel in.
And we basically say what's the sub set of skills.
In golf, we say okay, we want you to putt like Tiger.
But from the physical component we say, you know,
we want you to have the physical stamina and capacity
of an 800 meter runner.
We may want you to have the psychology of the Dalai Lama,
the presence and the state of mind.
And so we started to build these models,
and very quickly what it showed us was a really powerful tool
for two reasons.
We created, you know, sort of the fantasy golfer, if you like.
No one with that capacity in all domains existed, so no matter
who we benchmark against it they had an ability to strive
to become that person.
Future-proofed their model.
And another thing it obviously set us up for was the idea
of the interaction, the communication
between all the parties and how to balance the integration
of all these different training and components
such that we got excellence in the field of play.
Obviously, our models, and I'll rip through this pretty quickly,
depending on the sport or the activity,
the model may get very specific and very quantitative,
if we're trying to break a two hour marathon, for example,
we're going to look at bio chemistry and genetic level sort
of analysis of our models, obviously,
again these are very conceptual.
Our models -- oops, back one.
Our models help resource allocation.
So for F1 program is an example.
Physical is important, tons get me wrong.
But you ain't getting around that track
in a VW bug, you know?
So when you look at the line items
in the budget you'll see how the resource allocation works.
The car gotta go before we put the fisk driver in the car.
Is this making sense to you?
Again, I'm trying to give you a conceptual framework
for how we manage talent, manage world class talent,
and how we take people who are already really good
at what they do and push them to that next level.
This isn't about being top ten in the world,
this is about being -- moving from third in the world
to Number One in the world.
And this kind of analysis and kind of rigor is required,
because you can't leave many stones unturned,
as you guys would all be fully aware, when you try
to push that top level.
In the process sort of framework, we create this model,
this unbelievably sort of inspiring model of what it's
like to be world class in this particular field,
whatever it is.
We then obviously benchmark against that, we do something,
and that's something I think we're really good at.
We do something quick.
We just want to go and try something.
If it doesn't work, we stop and try something else.
And then we reevaluate.
fundmentally, it coming down to understanding the people we're
working with at a really unique and almost soulful level.
Trying to know who they are, trying to get them to stand
who they are, trying to develop programs
that support their dreams, challenge their weaknesses,
and really give them the opportunity
to become what their potential is.
So as I said, the model may look like that
for a very hypothetical, very inspirational person.
We would benchmark you against that and then obviously
that starts to build your plan.
So start to get into it.
So if we talk about it, and as we've done this research
and we've looked around,
we try to keep things very, very simple.
So in skill development, we break it down really
into five basic areas.
If we can get these things right we can get people
to do anything.
Do you agree?
Obviously, most of the crew turn up motivated.
So that's usually not an issue for us.
But it can become later in the career.
We obviously want to give them opportunity to practice,
we want to give them a chance to progress
and progress aggressively, feed back is critical,
failure is absolutely paramount to Excelling
to become the best in the world.
Does that make sense?
So as an example, I thought I'd throw
in a little bit of non Stratos stuff.
I'll show you a quick clip
of someone whose whole program was based on this
and then we'll talk about how Stratos related.
This is a program we set up about five years ago.
[ cheering ]
>> Well, Joe, I have to tell you,
that was an absolutely perfect landing for Robbie Maddison.
He nailed that one.
The sweet spot we talked about, he made it look so easy.
>> New year's eve, Las Vegas, Main Street there.
He's got to execute on cue, on New Year's Eve.
Nationally broadcast, so there's no room for timing or delay.
>> -- sky-rocketing into the air.
[Multiple voices speaking]
>> He's leaning out there, he was looking down,
the weight of the motorcycle alone would terrify a normal
human being.
Robbie's so confident as he goes to the edge
of that 100-foot drop.
>> Right now he's trying to find third gear.
Of course, it's funny as it sounds, if you come off
in second, the rear wheel will lock up, you crash.
If you come up in fourth you have no control.
So sitting out there trying to figure out which gear he's in.
Okay.
>> He did it!
[Cheering]
>> Higher than anybody has ever gone before,
and successfully returns.
>> That's good.
So how did we get him there?
Well, progression, repetition, feedback, ability to fail,
all those cool things.
So that's a sound stage that you see at the big concerts,
and where they have all the lights hanging off it,
you just crank them up to raise the lights
to the top of the roof.
So we just raised it, ten feet at a time.
It's progression, repetition, feedback.
Obviously you get pretty good feedback.
If you don't make it, you don't make it.
There's actually room for safety, too.
There's a big foam pit behind him,
but you get the general idea.
So Stratos.
You saw the capsule there, and the image in the capsule
up there, and this is some of the images --
image of the capsule head was you call it situational
awareness, we call it feedback.
Whatever works.
Amazing structural integration of the camera systems.
Was it 19, Art?
19 high definition on that platform telling us everything
that Felix needed to know about his situation,
allowing us to have good awareness of the space,
and obviously providing feedback.
Of course, we were really concerned about this
from the whole marketing perspective.
But obviously, the throw back
for us is this is never before seen images, and people over
and over again commented when they were watching,
felt like they were right there.
We got more feedback about the ability of people to share
in the experience and how magic that was
than pretty much anything else.
So it applied across the board.
And then obviously, failure.
Second man flight where the capsule came
in a little hot, and busted up.
And then the failed balloon launch
on the last manned balloon flight.
Again, a huge part of our program was pushing, failing,
reassessing, pushing, failing, reassessing.
Nothing new to you guys.
But I do know, even in our organization,
has a high tolerance for risk, and eventually, you know,
the leadership started getting a little bored of that, you know?
They're like, hey, come on,
when is this thing actually going to happen.
So it was an active part, especially of our program,
to continually reenforce, talk about risk,
and how we manage and how we do it.
And I'll speak to that a little bit more at the end.
Nutrition.
And nutrition program, actually very sophisticated.
And these are some examples,
actually they didn't come up real well.
But we do a fairly sophisticated set of blood paneling
across all the athletes, and now all the musicians and artists,
looking for parallels, looking
for similarities amongst high achievers.
Also, specifically for each athlete, try and understand
where the opportunity lies to get
that extra little bit out of them.
And this program, I think origins was actually developed
at NASA, as I understand, years ago.
Now it's turned into a fairly common part of our program,
every athlete goes through it.
These are Felix's numbers here.
We made small, subtle changes to his diet as a part
of his training regime, and the results speak for themselves,
he improved dramatically as a course of it.
So again, the best part about this is we have
so many world-class athletes and musicians and talent
that we're starting to create a fantastic database of things
that seem to be similar among these groups and not so similar.
Most of the stuff we're seeing is most
of the diets are really bad.
So small, little movements to make
and recorrect are really proving,
often paying high dividends.
And I see in the future very quickly the point
where we shift beyond just resetting and recorrecting
and rebalancing the diets to some
of these new organic compounds and derivatives that are manage
out to actually accent wait some
of the characteristics here's looking for elite performance.
Here's some old slides, and I just threw these up,
because again, speaking from the reference
of the global performance program and how we funneled
that into the Stratos platform, years and years of research
in blood and training,
cardiovascular strength training,
and numbers out the back, I tell you.
The guys that take care of all this stuff are fantastic
at pulling all this stuff together.
So it was that sort of platform and that sort of ability
that we managed and brought to program which then allowed us
to have a very simple framework to get Felix
in the best shape of his life.
And there it is.
Guys, again, you'll be very familiar with some of this.
It's a basic framework which we actually push physical
excellence in the program.
I won't get into the details here,
but you know that's the standard sort
of threshold based cardiovascular challenge test
that gives us lactate at certain work loads, which allows us
to form training loads and heart rates, et cetera, et cetera.
Very standard stuff.
We cross reference these data in a stationary
or controlled environment with the data we're collecting
from the manned balloon flight, one, two, and three.
Felix's data, you can see the heart rates,
and the respiratory rate and that sort of information there.
That was added back into all that portfolio of data
on all the other athletes that we have in the program,
and obviously we then built his plan and then
at the final stages just doing some specific work
to help him move in the suit.
And the wonderful thing about those programs,
they're so simple, they're so effective, ***, ***, ***.
Again, we're not trying to make him a marathon runner.
We're shooting for that target in terms of vision,
using those techniques that world class Olympians use,
takes a normal person -- they get fit very,
very quickly, and very efficiently.
It's all about time.
The psychology, obviously, this is one that got a lot of press,
with the challenges Felix had
with the suit and the rest of it.
And again, we have a -- we have a fairly strategic approach
to this.
Overall, again, pulling the psychological research
and investigations we can from all our talent to try
and define those characteristics
that separate the world class abilities.
Our basic program
in the psychology framework has the nutrition piece,
which you saw some slides from before.
The mind which is more the behavioral assessment
and the awareness and training that we do.
And then the brain, which is the mechanics, the wiring.
So this is a simple system we use, Q E G, very common.
Not widely regarded as a very efficient
or accurate training tool, but as we've started and many
of the groups we're associated with have started,
they are getting to the point where the analysis
and the mathematics and the ability to dig
into this data is getting to the point
where you can actually define and look
at closely what this means.
So even though we don't have a high level of reliability
and validity in the actually assessment using the Q platform
right now, when we started, which was four
or five years ago, since we added the portfolio
of talent we're starting to see trends and patterns,
and we're actually seeing some very unique abilities
and patterns and signals that are giving us a lot
of promise for training.
And when we back that with training
in this space we're actually seeing remarkable improvements
some of the athletes.
These are kind of made up.
So -- [laughter] -- that one always gets a laugh.
[Laughter] Seriously, we don't really know yet,
we're at the forefront of this.
But that's the idea, isn't it?
If we wait until it's published
in some scientific research paper,
the rest of the world will be kicking our butts.
We have to do and we have to play and we have to test
and push in these spaces so we're at the front and the rest
of the world is looking for us, and chasing us.
And the ideal thing with world class talent,
what you realize very quickly, is that the generalized data,
and I'm really beating up on the scientists today, that you get
from the research papers doesn't typically translate very well
moving the very best at the top of the curve.
Some things that people say don't have any impact sometimes
have the greatest impact.
Some things that have considerable, you know,
what you'd think to be the -- sort of have no impact,
you give to one particular athlete and they go
through the roof with it.
So we don't look at the research other than for trends.
We specify and individualize
and characterize every platform based on that person.
And if it works, it works.
If a cattle prod, you know, gets them going,
a cattle prod gets them going.
It doesn't matter what we're trying to achieve as long
as it works for that athlete.
So that's the framework from the neural --
sort of neural mapping that we're getting, again, very busy.
Getting more simple all the time, but you get a sense
of the idea that we're looking for.
>> Yeah, you're waiting to see what the day will hold.
>> Didn't catch that many waves,
but the ones he caught was the bombs.
>> My morning started, like I said, we got out there --
>> I want you to pay attention very closely
to what he's saying.
>> -- my first wave --
>> -- and listen carefully to that.
>> -- a little bit too deep and I tried to do these three pumps
as I pulled into the barrel.
And on the third one when I was in the barrel I pearled
from the wave sucking up so much, and I just did a cartwheel
through the barrel, head over heels, got whipped.
And I held on it a pretty long time, right when I popped
up I saw Jamie Sterling pointing this huge barrel
that was just unloading like ten feet in front of me.
And I got blown into the lagoon.
And I couldn't really swim, I had two life jackets on,
and I got drug over the reef into the lagoon.
And I was pretty much warm and ready.
It was really crowded, so we were just kind of --
trying to be patient and only go on good waves,
not really waste our time on the smaller ones
that everyone was trying to battle for.
You never know how big it could really be out there.
You don't know if the swell didn't peak or it peaked
over night, or if it's going to peak at noon.
So just kind of anxious, that's the feeling.
>> The water there is about four feet deep on Karl Reefs.
>> -- want to try to get the wave of the day.
>> The next wave was pretty much the best wave of my life.
I thought it was a descent-sized wave.
I didn't think it was going to be a gigantic wave or anything.
The water was pulling so hard off the reef,
and you're going against the grain.
It feels like it's yanking you up the face,
you've just got to hold your line.
So I just leaned as hard as I could into my heels,
and as it started to barrel when I was going into it,
I remember it getting all dark.
It felt like I was in the shadow of it.
It felt pretty tall,
but I couldn't really tell how tall it was.
And I remember right when I made the turn in the barrel,
and it felt like I could fit a school bus next to me.
Then I saw from there the shock wave, like, shot up,
was like hitting the back of my foot.
I thought the wave was going to pass me by and left me
in the foam ball, just annihilate me.
I could die, but that's kind of --
want to try to keep that in the back of your mind.
Not really in the front.
Your just stoked that you made it, that close to falling,
and those are always the best waves of your life,
when you think you're not going to make it.
Oh, I'm too deep, I'm too deep,
and then you take a different line
and the foam ball hits you and shoves you out.
That surprise is what makes it the best wave of your life.
I was happy.
Ten years ago people would have saw a photo of that wave,
thought no way that's even rideable.
>> So again, the theme in learning
from all the best in class we have.
I mean, surfers, people write them off pretty quickly.
But what about what he says
and what his approach there do U demonstrates world class?
He can recount everything in exact detail.
So the sense that you know straight away,
he was very present at that time.
He remembers my heels were back, my toes were forward.
He knows exactly what's going on.
He's not like, oh hell, I'm going die.
He's in the moment.
He got wiped out on that reef, which is probably one
of the deadliest places in the world to surf.
And what did he do?
I'm warm. I'm ready to go.
On a world stage he failed in front of everybody.
But these guys and girls are so used to failure
and picking themselves up with they fall over.
Get back up there, have another go.
So we're learning a lot all the time.
And these are untapped potential in some of these athletes
and groups and populations that have never been looked
at in the way we're looking at them.
It's just a privilege to be involved with them every day.
Based on that, though,
we obviously know we're seeing the same old things come back
around for 50, 60 years.
Any shrinks in the room?
Yeah, this is like I think from the early BC years, I think.
This diagram has been running around.
But it's reenforced over and over again.
And a big part of Felix's program and a big part
of being faced with these challenges was just
the education.
Everybody at a certain point in a certain activity is going
to get to a point of arousal where their behavior
and their performance starts to deteriorate.
You'd all agree, correct?
So this is a normal phenomenon.
This is a conversation we're having with Felix.
This is what's going to happen.
In our athletes, in all these populations,
as soon as they understand it, okay,
it becomes more real for them.
It's not this boogyman in the back
of their head sort of freaking them out.
So we spend a lot of time talking about how
to use these tools and how to educate them so they understood
as well as we did what was going on with their bodies.
I talked earlier about risk.
The idea that perceived risk is high, actual risk is low.
That doesn't get you anywhere, you know?
That's a good training tool, maybe.
But you know, the idea of public speaking,
the real risk is really quite low
from a personal physical perspective.
But the perception can be very high.
That's why people get bent
out of shape standing in front of crowds.
On the other side of the coin when it's high
and you don't perceive it as high we start to kill people.
It's dangerous.
So just having these conversations about, okay,
where do we want to be?
We want to be right in here.
We want to know the balance and the actual, but then as we do,
we want to push out and beyond because this is
where the magic happens.
The more you can understand the risk
and the more your acceptance and perception
of the risk the more you can mitigate it,
and that's where you really start to push beyond and beyond.
So a large part of our program
across both the athlete portfolio
and even the organizational portfolio was to understand risk
and the failure and all these pieces that go with innovation
and pushing the limits are really a natural part of it.
And it's never-ending.
It never stopped.
It's not like we have one meeting and it's all good.
Keep going back, keep going back to the well.
Life skills, the next X-Factor.
This is the year of our program which is basically R
and D. It's the area which we don't really understand why
certain people are able to do certain things
at such a high level and how do they do it,
and why do they do it.
So what we try to do is look at life skills, X factor,
and research into this space to try to pick that piece apart.
And fundamentally, at the end of the day for Felix
and the program, it was the area of life skills and X factor
that really set him up for success.
He came into the program as a base jumper,
as a person who is solely responsible for their own safety
and their own equipment, and typically he would go up,
climb up a mountain, jump off,
and there's usually one photographer there.
He turned up to Stratos
and there's 200-plus world class people running around trying
to help him do his job.
And he suddenly realized pretty quickly he had to rely
on everyone in that room to help him do what he needed to do,
and he wasn't set up for it.
So the conversations with Felix,
and really the fundamental process for everyone
in the program as things got tough was this,
represented in this plaque we made for him
and then put around the building.
At this point in time we'd all realized we were part
of something pretty special and something amazing,
and it was this conversation with Felix, like in 20,
30 years when he's sitting down having this --
recounting this period of your life in front of your children
or your grandchildren, how's that story going to be told,
what are you going to say to them.
And it seems trite, and people say really, is that all it was?
But we really dug with him, he spent a lot of time talking
to him about it, and the rest of the community around him
and the rest of the team started to think about it.
We kept reenforcing this was not going happen again
for any of us.
Not like this, not right now.
How we behave now, how we conducted ourselves,
how we presented ourselves, how we supported each other.
This was all the conversations we wanted to be having
in a positive light, moving down the track.
And I think as we look back both Art and I,
we think about all the wonderful people
and the amazing journey it was,
that the stories we're now telling back, even this close
to the event itself already reflect on a lot
of the work we did in this space.
And so basically, to wrap things up, I want to leave you
with this kind of -- go back one, sorry -- well, back two.
Too quick on the draw.
When we first started in this program,
and even when I first came
to the Red Bull portfolio I had a professional sports,
Olympic sports, some military organizations
, businesses, working with people in those realms.
Everyone's talking about 1% more and 2% more.
What I realized was that at a certain point
in time there's all these other people running
around doing these amazing things,
and we don't even know squat about them.
And it got me thinking, okay, if we think back at a certain point
in time in our evolution, we're running around with sticks
and rocks and we thought we were pretty evolved.
Relative to today, we think of them
as monkeys running around with sticks.
If you throw that in reverse and push it forward,
the idea that at some point in the future we'll look back
on today and it will be, wow, there were a bunch
of monkeys running around with fancy phones.
That to me was an epiphany in terms of scream
to the opportunity of what's a potential for individuals
to perform at their very best.
And I think based on what I'm seeing, based on the research
that I'm hearing, and based on what these projects like Stratos
and that are delivering that there's unlimited potential
to improve on what we're doing.
The 1 to 2% is -- that's out the door.
Even that conversation had a significant impact
on our organization.
So with that, I'm going to finish up.
I'm going to kick over to a bit of a video
to kick off Art's section, but thank you for your time
and I appreciate you sitting here
on a Friday afternoon listening to us.
[ Applause ]
>> -- the spirit of man has always been to try
to go higher, deeper, faster.
>> I think I'm one of these guys who always wanted
to be the first one in a place
where no one has ever been before.
>> I always wanted to be at the top of something.
>> Going into the next era in space.
If we can prove that you can break the speed
of sound, and stay alive.
I think that's the benefit of the future of space exploration.
>> If something goes wrong, you're all by yourself.
That's a little scary.
>> This is what I'm thinking about all the time.
>> You know, I've been working four years on this project,
I've been waiting 52 years for somebody to beat my record.
>> It's been a long journey.
And we're all delighted we're finally at that final step.
[Music]
>> Status in the capsule is green,
instrumentation is green, and medical is green.
>> Stand by for you to get ready for your trip to space.
[ Music ]
>> I'm ready to jump
>> You were born ready, Felix.
Move pilot monitor to the exit position.
>> Roll the door open and engage the door stop, Felix.
>> Door is open.
>> Disconnect the oxygen hose.
.
>> Roger
>> Ata boy.
Stand up on the exterior step.
Release the helmet tie down strap.
Start the cameras.
And our guardian angel will take care of you.
>> Sometimes you have to be up really high
to see how small you are
>> I'm coming home now
[ Music ]
[ Music and singing ]
>> How's he doing?
[Music and singing]
>> He's spinning!
>> Yeah!
>> There's the chute!
[ Music ]
>> -- our limits.
>> So kind of interesting.
[Laughter]
[ Applause ]
>> There's so many things about Stratos
that are pretty fascinating, as far as crossing
over different cultural boundaries,
intellectual boundaries, attitudes, you know,
Andy's part was huge in trying
to control Felix and his personality.
Often, when you get an extreme athlete they can also tend
to become a diva of sorts.
And Andy was fantastic in helping that,
in helping to overcome that and get Felix back on track.
His fears, handling his fears, it's like we look at it
from an engineering or scientific aspect of how
to reach our end goal, how do we accomplish the task at hand.
And when you enter in all the soft,
fuzzy parts like the athlete or the astronaut, the difference
with NASA is you use astronauts that are flight test pilots,
they're military background, they're disciplined,
they're taught kind of an extreme process.
So when Felix had his meltdown that was so widely talked about,
he called me and said, you know, Art, well, you know,
what do they do, what does the Air Force do or NASA?
They've got to have some kind of thing they do to fix this.
Yeah, they get rid of you and they bring in the next guy.
So you know, in this case, instead, we did something
that had really not been done, is we brought in the experts
to fix the athlete, to fix the emotion, overcome that.
And that wasn't easy.
So what Red Bull, you know, publicly you see that people
when they watch the BBC video they think, oh,
well they altitude test at Brooks, you know?
Then they stuck him in a balloon
and they took him up to 24 miles up.
And so it -- having this opportunity to talk
to intellectuals like yourselves and really be able to show
that there's a lot more to this,
that it's not the public perception
of some energy drink company that ties a rope
around a guy and sends him up.
It was really very specific that when I first went to talk to him
about it back in 2005, so for me it was a seven-year process ,
I brought the team together in late 2007, December 2007 is
when I actually started bring a lot of the team together.
But I spent two years doing research and proving out
and getting everybody kind of on the same track,
and getting Red Bull, who is into extreme sports athletes
and Andy's brilliance in managing these guys
to understand that it couldn't be an event,
it couldn't be a stunt.
It had to be a flight test program.
And that was the task we took on through the next five years,
seven for me, was to have them understand that it had
to be a flight test program.
There was a lot of resistance, cultural, personalities,
budgetary issues, Australians and Germans love
to be very controlling and manipulative
on what they do sometimes.
I think a few of you have probably experienced that.
So from that, it's overcoming them
to understand the program we're trying to put in place,
and it has to be a flight test program.
The only way I'm going to bring the friends of mine
and the brilliance of the people who were part of this team,
who I had worked with for so many years, was to get them
to understand it was a flight test program.
We're the first private company in forty-some years
to be able to buy space suits.
And the David Clark Company swears
that they didn't put it this way, but it was something
to the effect of not no,
but hell no when I first talked to them.
And Jack still to this day says I never said that.
But convincing them that we were serious
about what we were doing, and understanding my background
in aerospace and research and development,
that I was sincere about bringing it on.
And I brought people who were dear friends of mine,
like Mike Todd, our life support engineer, who's probably suited
up more people in an S-1034 than anybody, and Einar Enevoldsen
who is brilliant, flown over 300 different aircraft including the
high altitude drone and U2s and SR 71's,
and Warping Wings, and X Wings.
He flew the original lifting body for pre-space shuttle.
And so having them understand that this was the level
of personality, this was the level of experience,
much like a lot of the people here in this room.
You know, a lot of you would have been perfect candidates
in being involved in Stratos,
to let them understand our seriousness
about having a flight test program.
Andy Pomanus who is our chief physiologist, I brought Andy on,
and he's the one who does all the pre-breathing schedules
for NASA.
And that was important for me.
So we had some great teams which I'll mention in a little bit.
Some of them are actually in the audience.
I'm blessed to have you guys here.
But Sage Cheshire we do a lot of weird things,
and people like to know I like doing unusual projects.
Worked on a lot of movie projects.
My background with Red Bull -- had left Northrop,
was doing design for Volkswagon Audi, doing a number
of movie projects, the Batmobile for Batman and Robin,
and the free suits, and we did the F-35 that chases Bruce --
Bruce Willis down the freeway.
And built -- Red Bull came to me and I started building vehicles
for Red Bull in their infancy
when they came to the United States.
So we have a company, A to Z effects cam 2, where we built
over 700 vehicles for Red Bull.
The little can cars you see driving down the street?
That was us.
And it's funny, because I was working on an X-37
and had a car load of NASA engineers with me,
and we were coming into town to look at something
on the project, and as we get off the freeway the very first
car we see drive by is a can car.
All the NASA engineers are like, Art, Art!
So in the midst of Stratos when we're going Stratos,
we had started this whole thing, the Pima Air & Space Museum come
to me, and they wanted to try to inspire the next generation.
You are all here because when you were kids there was some
significant thing in your life that inspired you.
I talk about how when I was a kid you could buy a chemistry
set when I was a kid, you could blow things up with
that chemistry set that you bought.
Nowadays, you buy a chemistry set,
there aren't even chemicals in them.
So today's generation is inspired to be gamers,
nothing against gamers, but --
or worse yet, to be an assistant to a famous person.
You know, and what we need to do is figure
out how do we inspire the next generation to be you, you know?
To be engineers, scientists, mathematicians,
to try and reach further for what can be accomplished.
So Pima Air & Space the largest private space museum
in the US said, well, we want to inspire kids.
And we want to build big paper airplane.
So after launching unmanned flight one and two,
we built a large paper airplane, all paper.
There's no structural components in it.
It was all paper.
And it was to inspire kids for getting into engineering
and wanting to be astronauts, wanting to be engineers.
And so this is a 45-and-a-half foot long,
24-foot wing span paper airplane that we launch
from an Scorkey [Phonetic] S-58 T at 1500 feet above ground.
And it flew just short of a mile,
got up to 98 miles an hour in flight.
The tow hook on the helicopter ended up staying with it,
so it was very nose-heavy.
But we had 300 kids waiting with baited breath,
to watch the plane fly.
So we flew it with a bad aerodynamic center.
But the idea is it inspired kids, and the reactions,
we had kids in Australia and all over the world writing
in about the giant paper airplane.
So it was a good success in that sense.
So being different is a good thing.
We'll skip through this one.
So Red Bull Stratos, highest altitude, 127,852.
We averagely said 128,000, publicly I always stated 120.
Red Bull was like, why do you want to state 120?
I believe state low, achieve high.
You know, you guys know from experience, you know,
high altitude solar airplanes, does that sound familiar,
where you state you're going to go to 100,000 feet and you end
up at 98, and everybody thinks you failed.
You know, give me a break.
So I said that's not going to happen.
We said 120 was our altitude,
even though originally 130 was my target.
The only problem was we ended up with a thousand pounds
of extra camera gear on board.
There's something about this marketing thing, I don't know.
As it worked out, by the time we got
through with all the stuff my new target was 127,
which we actually exceeded, which was great.
But publicly, the 120 number came back to haunt me,
because all the aerodynamicist around the world, and trust me,
I've heard from almost every one, kept telling me
that my numbers are wrong, you're never going
to reach mach, it's never going to happen.
Up until literally minutes before launch I was still
getting e-mails and texts, and people complaining to me
that I didn't know what I was doing.
So as it worked out, 127,852.
What's great about that is going higher
than 127 was we actually added additional velocity and speed
in free fall, which gave us a longer range in mach,
and mach as you know is a function of temperature.
And so the coldest part of the atmosphere is the region
in that 60-70,000 foot range.
So by increasing our velocity,
getting down to a lower altitude,
we actually stretched the amount of time he was in mach,
which was pretty cool.
He came out at 75,000 feet.
So we ended up at 843 miles an hour,
mach 1.25 without a drug stabilization,
even though we had designed a drug stabilization system.
Okay, vertical distance, 119,000 feet.
4 minutes and 20 seconds, everybody says, so,
did Felix pull early so he wouldn't break Joe's record.
That's a common question.
Reality is when Joe stepped off he was at a lower altitude,
but he had a drogue chute.
In his day they immediately assumed you're going to go
into a flat spin, but they know you don't have enough Q
when you first step off for a drogue to be functional,
so they gave it an 18-second time delay.
But he's falling with a drogue,
which is slowing his descent rate, stretches out time.
You guys get it.
Okay, so Stratos project, define objectives, disciplines,
industry experience, define road map.
>> You can say it too.
>> Challenges -- near space --
this should say near space environment.
I'm talking to NASA, you can't say space environment.
So near space environment, we always try and correct that.
I didn't catch that one.
But obviously, it is a near space environment.
GPS accuracy, was a bit concerned of is the GPS going
to function in free fall at mach speeds from those altitudes.
They try to build in little functions to keep you
from using these things
on intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Human platform, you know, we're carrying a man so we have
to have certain things built in,
the sonic barrier impact and the setbacks.
Some of the setbacks are personality,
some are bureaucracy.
People -- government getting involved, people trying
to do blocks, and the stories go on and on.
It would make your head spin how many people tried to stop me
from making it happen.
So at Sage Cheshire we were the prime contractor.
We did pretty much everything on the program.
As far as getting all the systems built for the capsule,
for the chest pack design, integration of all the systems
on board, we were involved in the parachute design,
the emergency drogue system, and the flight train systems,
we helped out with Flatline films on a lot
of the electronics for the capsule camera systems.
There were a lot of challenges in the fact
that you're taking electronics in a near-vacuum environment.
There's less than 2% -- 0.2% atmosphere.
I thought, well, we'll just do what NASA does.
Then I realized oh wait, you never actually open
up the space shuttle to a vacuum condition.
So in our case we had to develop solid state circuit breakers,
first of its type, that we could actually activate
from the ground or from inside of the capsule
where it's measuring the voltage load across the circuit instead
of doing it thermally, which was a challenge.
Unfortunately, we didn't patent that idea.
Okay, so use of a pressurized capsule.
We don't want to have full exposure to Felix.
Joe, you've really got to hand it to Joe.
Here's a man who went to 102,800 feet.
Nobody had ever been that high.
The president wanted to know pre space, pre Apollo, pre Gemini,
can man survive at that altitude.
So Joe, in the Air Force, gets in an open basket
with a pressure suit with duct tape wrapped around his gloves
and legs, he's got this snow suit over it,
and went to 102,800 feet and steps off.
Nobody's done that.
Felix can at least say, well, he did it, so, you know.
And he was full exposure.
Open basket.
So he's going through all the thermal exposure.
You're looking at, you know, minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit
for two-and-a-half hours in a pressure suit in an open basket.
They had their electronic systems were batteries,
lead acid batteries.
Think about this, lead acid batteries above 60,000 feet,
with a parachutes and little note attached,
if found, you know, $25 reward.
Joe said they never got any of those back.
So by using a pressurized capsule now,
which I was insistent on,
using a pressurized capsule you're reducing,
almost eliminating, not completely,
the risk of decompression sickness, DCS,
because his flight in that pressure capsule,
we flew him at 16,000 foot equivalent.
It was a pressure vessel at 8 PSI.
So the entire flight was at 16,000 feet.
So exposure was right at the end where he decompresses.
He goes ambient to near vacuum condition
and his exposure levels now reduced to less
than ten minutes at 128,000 feet.
So it's all in the design.
Door opening that allows easy function.
It was kind of a -- in my brain, saying okay, pressure vessel,
natural shame is a bubble, it's a sphere, right?
That's what it wants to go to, structurally.
Got to get a guy with an inflated suit out of a hole.
Four feet might work.
so we took a piece of plastic and I got Einar
and we got a pressure suit, got a hold of a pressure suit
and got Einer inflated, and we stepped him
out of a four foot hole on an office chair.
Said okay, you can get out of a four foot hole.
So we said okay, capsule size, 6 foot diameter,
4 foot diameter opening.
So I designed a -- what's called a hingeless door system,
some of you have seen it, that operates merely on a track.
The pressure holds it in place.
When you're at altitude,
you've got 10,000 pounds holding the door shut.
What do you need a hinge for?
It's just extra weight.
Life support redundancy.
We had 10 to 12 hours of liquid oxygen on board.
So even though of the flight is only max three,
we want to make sure we have a failure
of systems we're backed up.
We had emergency oxygen bottles, redundancy in everything we had.
We had cut offs for the dual bail out bottles,
dual communication and flight.
We were able to talk to them not only in the chest pack,
which I'll get into later, but also in the radios
on the capsule, we had dual radios
so if one failed he could switch over to the other.
Electronics that operate on [Inaudible] a little bit
of the solid state circuit breaker, and high absorption
for G load, because we want to make sure --
it's less than 12 Gs on landing, and if he had to come
down on the recovery parachute we wanted to make sure it was
under 12 G's, so we did extensive testing to figure
out what the crush pad area would need to be.
And we wanted to reuse our capsule and equipment.
So as it worked out, we were down about 6 --
between 6 and 8 G on landing
with 100 foot diameter drogue chute.
But we also need to be able to get him down fast.
So the concern was you have a decompression with the capsule
and there's a problem with the suit at altitude and you need
to be able to get him down, we need to be able to cut away.
So when you cut away from the balloon
to the recovery parachute there's a cable that runs
from the apex of the chute up to the top of the balloon.
As it cuts away, it tears a panel out and the balloon opens
up and releases all the gas.
Parachute and capsule go into free fall.
We put a reefing line on that parachute
that chokes 100-foot diameter parachute
down to 17-foot diameter.
We're able to cut down our descent rate time
from an hour-and-a-half down to the ground to about 20 minutes.
So the idea is if for some reason he had some kind
of decompression we'd be able to get him back down and run
in there and treat him.
The problem is the redundant system
that somebody else had built had three barrel switches
and three cutters, that system wasn't redundant, as it worked
out on man flight two, unfortunately Felix exited out,
because the capsule ended up coming in a full burn
on a reefed parachute, and it impacted
about 38 miles an hour into the ground.
Which would have been, you know,
catastrophic with Felix on board.
As it worked out, the three barrels to circle circuit board,
single ground, single plug, you can see where I'm going here,
that was quickly changed after I did a review of the electronics
and how they're running their system.
And fortunately, that became something of the past.
What was fascinating when we went to the site, and Mike Todd
and I were the first ones there,
the life support system was completely intact,
the electronics were all still on line,
the crush pad had done its job and crushed.
There was some exterior damage to the capsule.
We ended up doing a full tear down using our back up exterior,
our back up load frame, but we used the same sphere,
even though we had two spheres, we used the same sphere
as manned flight one and two.
But we stripped everything out and did a full investigation,
stripped it down to nothing,
took out all the fire proof paint, did another build
up of ply laminate inside and outside, replaced the batteries,
even though they were functional.
You can't risk micro fractures,
and replaced all the life support system
for new locks and new LN2.
LN2 is just to balance out.
So ergonomics, this is how it starts, right?
A plywood mock-up and a chair from Ikea,
and start thinking through the process.
We stuck Felix in a pressure suit,
pressurized it to full pressure.
Felix thought we were trying to give him an idea of what we had
in mind, what we wanted to know.
Can Felix survive in a pressure suit without freaking out on us.
So we left him in there for about 10, 15 minutes,
and Mike and I walked away.
I asked Mike, so, Mike, what are we doing here?
And he said, we're testing Felix.
I want to see if he can handle a pressure suit.
Because a lot of people can't.
They freak out.
And after about 15 minutes Mike says you know,
this may just work.
So we went over and let him out of the suit.
But a big part of it is being part
of the program and participating.
So the inside of the capsule here, there are 87 switches.
This is for the camera system alone.
This is for the science side.
These are all hooked up to the circuit breakers,
solid state circuit breakers.
They're alpha numeric so Felix could memorize
where everything is.
And we would drill him on where those switches are.
And he memorized all 87 switches.
We could say Felix, recycle F 7 or G 3
and he would know exactly what it was, what is that switch,
and he would tell us what it is.
There's boot and glove warmers, there's regulators over here,
for the -- two regulators for the --
oxygen, one for the nitrogen, battery cut off.
There's two separate sets of batteries.
Three batteries for the science side
and three batteries for the camera side.
Because we wanted to keep that separation.
If the cameras have a problem, that's a camera problem.
So as it worked out after a five-hour run
of the capsule system we still would retain about 17
to 20% reserve power on the camera system and usually had
about 50% reserve on the life support side.
There's up in the upper part here, there's two radios.
There's a master panel switch
for balloon cut away and ballasting.
We wanted Felix to have the option, but we never wanted him
to use those switches.
But it's important from a pilot point of view to have him feel
that he's got some form of control.
Instrumentation, this little tiny panel, if you looked
at the lab view panel that had all the data
that showed altitude, and pressure inside, outside.
We had -- it's a simple little LED read
out we made at Sage Cheshire.
And this is PO2, CO2, there's pressure inside
and outside pressure, there's temperature inside and outside,
there's battery conditions for camera and science side.
There's camera percentage and voltage,
so you get all this data that would be sent down,
telemetered down to the ground, and that was displayed
on lab view, and that was showing up on the screen
that a lot of you probably saw online.
There's also a screen here where the multi switcher flat line had
so he could look over the shoulder.
There's a video camera here.
Felix could look at the view down,
looking at the ground or up at the balloon.
There's 19 different camera angles from the boom.
So he can flip through and give himself full situational
awareness of what was happening.
He could watch the balloon as it's taking off if he wanted to.
There's CO2 scrubber and moisture scrubber,
a 30-min emergency bottle.
The locks and LN2 converts back here for the gas, liquid gas.
There's -- let's see what else we have here.
There's water bottles.
He was really good about keeping hydrated,
and the scrubber was hooked to the vent tube on the side,
you have the vent tube.
We wanted to try and dump as much moisture
as possible overboard.
So in our right-hand pod here you've got the flow meters
for oxygen and nitrogen.
You've got dual altimeters.
So he's reading differential pressure from outside to inside.
So when that door is shut we have him bring it
down 2,000 feet below and he holds that at 18,000 feet.
He's at 18 outside, 16 inside, and holds at 16,000 feet
by balancing out those bleed valves.
And what that bleed valve does is it takes the vent hose
from the suit, and it's venting overboard, and it's balancing
out and keeping that at 16,000 feet,
even though he's breathing oxygen, it's building up.
There's a vent, if he gets it adjusted just right it will keep
compensating for that.
The advantage to this whole panel is it keeps him thinking.
This is busy work.
You could probably make that an automatic panel,
but why would you.
Because we want him thinking about this,
rather than this, right?
So it keeps him going.
Then you have what we call the dump valve,
the release valve for the capsule.
When you release this valve,
in 9 seconds it releases the pressure
in the capsule at altitude.
So when he was at altitude and there was a hesitation,
it took him about a minute to dump this valve,
went on a private line and got back to Andy
and said he could do that in nine seconds instead
of a minute.
But you've got to understand, you can imagine the stress,
emotional stress he's going through,
thinking through the whole process.
Same thing with, like, the face plate heating.
And then of course there's the door.
Capsule design was a crush pad.
So it's a load frame process, back up systems.
It's a pressure sphere.
Everything is in pressure.
The door basically rolls
in a track, it's a chromoly load frame, aluminum honeycomb floor.
And this is the basket.
This is where all the camera equipment lies.
That's redundancy.
We had back up spheres just in case.
We had back up capsule systems, back up crush pads, floor pads,
battery, electronics, for long lead items you have to plan
for the event of having some kind of a problem.
So we made sure we had all these different modules ready
to go just in case.
And as it worked out, fortunately,
we used the same sphere that we used on the original.
And so load testing, we took the pressure capsule,
we operated at 16 -- 8 PSI, 16 000 foot equivalent.
We pressure tested to three times, went to 24 PSI
in pressure testing both vessels.
The load design was 250 PSI.
Oops, I think that was just a -- that's just pressure testing,
showing what the pressure testing was.
210 liter of OX, one 25 liter of nitrogen.
Felix had the feeding port, the feeding port in there,
which we called the pacifier that need
to have the constant flow of oxygen over your face
to have that cool air.
You feel a little bit calmer, you know, with that.
So we kept trying to get Felix to break that habit,
because what that did is it took --
I try to explain for every ounce you're putting of pure oxygen
into the capsule, if we're going to keep it at 25%,
NASA knows better than anybody why you want to do that,
we want to balance out the atmosphere in the capsule.
For every once you put in you've got to throw
in three ounces of nitrogen.
So we've got this huge 25 litersm of nitrogen
because he's running with the port in there,
with the feeding tube that's just dumping.
The other disadvantage of that instead of venting moisture off
that vent that we designed to go out through the scrubber
and exit out of the capsule it's all doing this.
So glove and foot heaters, space-rated batteries.
Thinking through the whole process
to make a functional capsule.
We also did unmanned flights.
We did two unmanned flights, I not only wanted
to train the flight crew, the recovery crew everybody on board
to understand how to use it.
We had to test the electronics.
So we sent the capsule up with the capsule electronics
without a pressure sphere, we used dumb bell weight
and loaded it upper and lower to give us the same CG.
But we wanted to test all the electronics
and also test during free fall.
Because my concern was --
you see this big asymmetrical camera arm hanging off,
I'm thinking okay, when it falls I was afraid it was going
to porpoise or possibly even propeller.
And as it worked out, it dropped perfectly straight.
It really did exactly what we wanted.
We also had a pod here,
a drop pod which we called Felix bomb-gartner.
And it had all the chest pack electronics in it, so the GPS --
because we wanted to know if the GPS was going to work
when we drop it from 97,000 feet and 109,000 feet.
And everything functioned fine.
Interestingly enough, Felix Baumgartner fell in kind
of a similar situation.
When you look at the infrared pictures,
the image is it's doing this.
But the reality is it's doing this.
It's doing kind of a long, flat hourglass.
We hesitate to even say flat spin,
because it was really -- it was under 60 RPM.
So electronics, GPS, weight dissumilate, center of gravity,
chest pack development.
The chest pack is on his chest.
Joe had a butt box.
We had the chest pack.
Joe's butt box had all of his equipment,
the older time circuitry.
He had this huge thing, and now one
of the reasons why the chest pack --
we want to try and move all that weight up as high as possible
to reduce any risk of occular hemorrhage, change the rotation
so in the event he goes into this rotational spin,
by having it low you're lowering the center of gravity,
the center of rotation, which means that now the --
the force to your head in a rotational spin is going
to increase and the chance of cerebral hemorrhage
or ocular hemorrhage gets very high.
Whereas by taking the chest pack, moving all that weight
as high as possible, we're going to reduce the risk of a red out.
So we built our own battery packs from A 123.
One to run the face plate heating,
one to run all the radio and GPS and electronics.
We had three GPS systems on Felix in the chest pack
and helmet, and then we had one more GPS system
on his parachute pack.
So we had four GPS systems all together.
The radio which we used for dual communication even
in free fall was just a hand-held Motorola modified
to fit into our chest pack.
We actually dialed down the Watts to one-and-a-half Watts,
because we didn't want to have a 5 Watt system on Felix's chest,
which caused other challenges, because now you've got a radio
that only reaches a mile-and-a-half.
So we designed a high gain antenna that we mounted
to the jailer, because we know those cameras are always
watching Felix.
And with the high gain antenna tracking him we actually got
dual com with Felix at over 65 miles.
So it was a good thing.
So three GPS, two data loggers, one IMU,
accelerometer, mach speed indicator.
He had a series of lights on there that would go from red,
yellow, green, that he could see,
get an idea of what his speeds were as well as the tone.
Kind of run through -- we had an amazing medical team.
John Clark was our medical director, I brought John
on board I think in 2009.
And he brought this amazing team of physicians, doctors,
practitioners, who, you know, some of these people support --
like Jen in the front row -- support the --
NASA now with a lot of the programs you're doing.
So that goes back to the cultural and interaction ,
where we're working together to really try and look at how
to take this the next step.
We also had the jailer and the flight line films group
with them, and you can see the antennas here on the bottom.
We had reverse coil so we could do one for data down link
and one for tracking Felix.
So the flight line films group was fantastic
in collecting all the images
that were just truly amazing film images,
it's like the only other place you see this is this place
called NASA.
So it was really a flight test program.
It was accumulation of A Number of Really Great Companies,
ATA Air space and Riedel,
WYLE Labs who let us use their facilities,
Beale Air Force Base, okay.
Flight test systems, the balloon itself, launching the balloon,
checking the parachute, the recovery parachutes,
being involved in all the different processes here.
Oh, I'm sorry.
That's what I'm doing wrong.
I'm hitting the laser.
So it's kind of an interesting idea,
people don't realize the balloon itself is 600 feet tall,
the recovery parachute is 150 foot
in tow and then the capsule.
So the total height is 750 feet.
The Saturn 5 rocket, most of you probably know this already,
that put Apollo on the moon is 360 feet tall.
So there's a real challenge in trying
to launch a 750 foot tall object with less than three knot winds.
Parachute systems, the G-***, which measured his G in spin,
it was set to three-and-a-half G's for six seconds.
If it ever stopped it would reset.
That would trigger off a drogue release in his chute.
We did exit training, because on the capsule we had this really
highly scientific technical term we wanted him
to do called the bunny hop.
And the idea again, you're in a vacuum, you don't want
to put any kind of rotational spin into what you're doing
when you step off because it's just going to accelerate.
So Felix is like, well normally I do, like a back flip.
It's like, no, no, no.
Chamber testing at Beale Air Force Base
and also Brook City Base, we did the full testing
with the capsule itself at City Base and we did Felix
to 130,000 feet in the Beale Air Force chamber.
And I said well, how high can you get it,
normally we go 80,000.
I said, well, why don't you go higher.
They said why would we?
We don't have anybody who needs to go higher than 80.
I said, can you get it to 130.
They said, we'll try.
And they managed to get us up to 130.
So that was kind of cool.
Vertical wind tunnel testing also, did a series of that,
did sky dive training from 16,000 feet out of helicopters,
27,000 feet out of sky vans, a whole series of those.
Felix on the bungji.
So this is how do you practice bungji jumping.
Felix in the wind tunnel.
We did inflated, uninflated, we put him in upside down,
we put him in all these different angles.
Jumping out of a Skyvan is coming next.
So Skyvan, we wanted to know if you go out backwards,
we want you used to be upside down.
So we got him jumping out backwards, and understanding --
and he is really in his element when he's in free fall.
His heart rate would go
up as he's pulling himself on the capsule.
And once he's on the step
and steps off his heart rate would drop.
It was interesting to see.
So now he's going to flip over, we say okay, Felix, flip it.
And he's very stable.
So we ran through hundreds of tests
with the parachute doing test jumps.
The pressure suit is similar --
similar to what the NASA suit is, you know,
basically we made some modifications of the suit,
leg positioning, we rotated the hip sections, rotated the arms.
Going to run through this real quick.
This shows some of the GPS.
We changed some of the face shield
to retain some of the heat.
We put one of our guys in a deep freeze
for three hours pressurized.
We did that three times.
We had one of our guys, Jason Lewis,
who we called the suit monkey.
So this will give you kind of -- I don't know if you can --
can you hit play on that?
This is a technical video that kind of shows all the data.
Oops.
[ Background noise ]
>> This is kind of the --
this is the one I think you really want to see,
which is all the data and information, and sorry, yup.
Okay, so there's a lot of information that you're going
to see here really fast.
So there's a 3D model that's going to show off the I M U,
there's a G meter, there's feet, there's a mach meter,
and if you watch the altimeter, there's blood rate,
respiration, and air speed.
It's going to start ramping up really quick.
But you see there's no movement in the fabric
because we're in a near vacuum.
And you'll see the rotational.
So he rotates like a turn, he's rotating clockwise.
He does that five times clockwise.
On the second turn he is -- going to be mach.
So now he's mach at 110,000 feet.
He's going mach.
And then he'll stabilize.
And that's an interesting thing
to see is he actually stabilizes while at mach, stops rotation.
But then he's moving his arms around and counter rotates.
So now he's starting to turn the other way.
On the third spin counter clockwise he goes Max mach
at 120, at 1.25, and then he starts to decrease.
And then he starts getting out of control.
He's pulling his arms in and back, he finally pulls them in
and at this point he's already sub mach now at 75,000 feet.
So it's interesting to see that he went in at 110,000 feet,
entered mach at 34 seconds after step off.
At 50 seconds he went Max, at 1.25 he was 843 miles an hour.
And he came back out, transonic, at 75,000 feet.
I told Felix from the beginning that I thought he'd probably --
from what I saw from manned flight one and two,
that he'd probably rotate about 14 times.
He ended up rotating 16 times.
So I was pretty close despite all those last minute phone
calls from everybody around the world.
And so it was pretty interesting
that his rotational spin was about 60 RPM Max.
I think it was probably closer to 57, but it's hard
to actually count it when you're looking
at the adjustment of that.
In comparison, Joe was 120 RPM.
And Luke Aikens who was our parachutist
who we had do all the testing with the parachutes,
Luke intentionally had him put himself
in an asymmetrical position.
He got up to about 90 RPM,
and that would trigger the drogue system.
It would see that three-and-a-half Gs
for six seconds, and would get the drogue out.
And within two rotations he would stop the spin
and stabilize.
It's a shoulder-high drogue, which I also got a lot
of grief over that one too.
But my feeling was you want the head more towards the center
than towards the outside.
Because we didn't want to risk the occular hemorrhage.
So all the safety systems, everything functioned perfectly.
It really -- we had great success, and a lot of it was
by bringing together a team of brilliant people and engineers
and doctors and camera crew
to really make it happen as an organization.
Andy and Red Bull, you know, as active partners, I mean,
Red Bull, you know, a lot of people are like, yeah,
well they're just throwing the money at it.
They were actually involved from all aspects,
sometimes more than I wanted.
But the reality was is that they had the horse power
to make so much of it happen.
A lot of the mission control, the infrastructure, I mean,
the balloon crew which is used to launching for AFRL,
they got completely spoiled.
You know? So -- so that's pretty much it.
Any questions?
[ Applause ]
>> Excellent, guys.
We're running a little long on time so we'd invite anybody
for a couple of questions to come up to the mic
and ask their questions so we can get them on --
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
>> Good question.
There was a time I wouldn't have answered that question.
But since Red Bull released information on BBC,
and that number was 28 million -- I went what?
My original bid in 2005, including three space suits,
including the 15 balloons, including the launch crew,
all the scientific build up and testing, two capsules,
my budget in 2005 that I gave them was $10 million.
We had some things happen,
as far as head-butting a little bit along the way.
And because of that, that ended
up costing us another million-and-a-half, probably,
an extra year-and-a-half in time.
And in the end, when everything was said and done we ended
up coming in right about $11 million.
Which tells me that there's another $17 million that went
to media and infrastructure and all of the other stuff.
So --
>> You mentioned that during sky dive testing,
Felix's heart rate, he was in his element
and his heart rate went down in reality
when he actually did the jump what was the pattern
of his heart rate for those four minutes?
>> He was highest just before egress,
just as he was pulling through.
And your question is what it was when he was in free fall.
The average was about 175, 177.
Which on his Max bike test when he does it,
is about 15% lower than all out.
You know? Still working, but you know, we see that a lot.
Even motorcycle sports, motor sports, 180,
190 for an hour-and-a-half.
Obviously, there's an adrenaline piece and other things going on.
It's not just the exertion side of it.
>> And it's interesting, because they collected --
because when they put the bio med system on him
and they put him in the suit, it's running, it's recording.
They call all the pre-breathe data, they got him walking
out to the capsule, they got him getting in, full flight,
landing, and walking back out to get unsuited.
So they have a really long profile
and about this much of it is the jump.
But they have it for every jump.
So it's pretty interesting.
>> And for his training and all the other --
>> All the training, and the capsule, egress training,
because we did egress training as well.
>> So now that the flight is
over are there physiological follow-up checks
with Felix for his health?
>> He did some immediately post,
and then I know he did another set of basic check-ups back
when he returned home.
We haven't done any follow-up since then.
And there is no plan.
He was in such good shape in every test that we did pre,
over that four or five year period.
We never saw anything, even after the first balloon flight.
So yeah, hopefully he's still kicking
over there somewhere in Austria.
>> He's having fun, trust me.
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
>> Didn't feel it at all.
>> Didn't feel it.
>> Didn't feel any -- any differences.
Yeah. That was the interesting thing was you --
and we've run through this video, you know,
a number of times just to try and see if we notice anything.
And you know, it's -- it was --
you know, he didn't feel any effects of it.
He was just trying to figure out the spin situation.
We told him when you first step off you will have absolutely
no control.
Don't try and start doing things,
because it's going to change very quick.
As the atmospheric pressure starts to onset,
it starts coming on, your big movements
to get little changes are going
to start going the opposite direction,
all of a sudden you're going to start influencing.
That's what you see towards the end, when he starts getting
into that flat spin he is actually doing this,
trying to stop the rotation.
And it starts to get out of control.
And so he says okay, I'm going back to basics.
I'm pulling in, I'm going to wait.
What he ended up doing is he throws his arms out
and goes into an arch.
And as he goes into an arch he's doing this rotational spin,
as he goes into the arch that pulls him
through center and he's does this.
Because what we told him is that in flight you want to try and be
at delta, you want to be on a run because now your center
of gravity, your center of rotation is going
to be off your body, it's going to be out in front of you.
And instead of a flat spin you're going to start moving
into more of a spiral condition.
And that's kind of what you see.
>> We'll make this the last question,
and if our guests are able to stick around after --
>> Yeah, we can.
>> I'm convinced on this that you had it well bounded.
But for your partner there, how do you know the difference
between a challenge that's pushing the envelope
and a foolish stunt.
>> That's a great question.
>> That is a great question.
>> You want to answer that?
>> Yeah.
>> A lot of the stuff we do, when you see it done
on TV it comes over as a one-off.
And I think the way we structure the programming is there's
so much practice and rehearsal before hand.
And we're always gauging that perceived --
that balance of perceived an actual risk.
And we're looking also at them as an individual
and how they're responding, and we can tell with the experience,
some of numbers even,
we see some warning signs we'll start to back off.
Ultimately, the athletes, the people involved
in the program make the call, but we have the rights
to override if we see something that seems untoward.
And I tell you, I've got a pile on my desk of crazy ideas
that we sometimes move into the do the category,
but most of them stay over there because they're so outlandish.
But there's a lot of review and scientific process that goes
into that, because we want it to be exciting,
we want it to be challenging, we want people to push,
we don't want anyone to be hurt.
>> And for us --
>> I see those videos with base jumping with the squirrel suits,
clearing bridges by tens of feet, and I go -- whoa.
>> And the problem is a lot
of those guys they're extreme athletes
that don't understand the aero dynamics.
That's where they get in trouble.
You know, Red Bull is really good about trying to bring
in the experts to try and educate the people.
You know, because the squirrel suit issue is a big issue.
I lost one of my dear friends who was a Red Bull athlete,
doing terrain following.
And you get this illusion
that you're an airplane when you aren't.
And they'll do a pull, they'll try and flare,
which is the worst thing you can do in a squirrel suit
because then you lose flight ability and you drop.
And that's exactly what they do,
because they're like, I'm flying.
>> In that example we're actually working on a system
that feeds back to their ear that gives them an idea of lift
or flight and horizontal velocity so they can actually --
they don't know their falling, as Art said,
so they do make a miss calculation.
But again, that's a new sport with a new bunch of athletes,
and they're pushing hard.
That's where the risk is going.
>> Some of our goals is to give them tools
that they can better understand what's actually happening,
not what they're perceiving.
It's like flying in clouds.
>> It should be ready pretty soon if you want to have a go.
>> Thanks.
Let me know.
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you Andy, thank you Art.
>> Thank you everybody.
>> Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> So I've been -- as I listened there have been
so many things that stuck out.
And I really wanted to thank you for sharing the story,
but more importantly sharing the story behind the story,
the preparation of the human system, the mechanical system.
We see all the hard work that went into this,
I think we understand how hard this is,
we salute your accomplishment.
>> We're honored to be here.
>> Thank you very much.
>> It's a pleasure to have you guys here, and I'm going
to ask Jim to come up and join us to make a presentation.
I did want to -- just one thing that really stuck out to me is
that one tag line you guys had
of how do you want to be remembered.
And we've been talking a lot here at JSC
about what the next 50 years look like.
I was having lunch with Jim just the other day,
and I think Jim summarized it in a nutshell, that we want folks
to look back, as you said, at this period and just as we do
at our predecessors and say wow, look what those guys did.
You know, with their little cell phones, monkeys walking around.
[Inaudible] accomplish.
And that's really the image that I have in mind.
You know, I think that's the challenge to all of us
in the room, that you help us to remember, how do we want
to be remembered, how do we want to make history.
And I thank you for inspiring us.
>> For us, I reflect what Stratos really was is what NASA
is about.
It really is.
You know what I mean?
It's the inspiration of going the next step.
You know, so all you guys, it's really --
the NASA organization is what inspired us
to think on these terms.
So it's really an honor to be here.
>> Thank you very much.
>> I would like to present you with just a couple mementoes.
Thank you again.
Thanks for the presentation.
>> Thank you so much.
>> It's wonderful.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you so much.
I think there's a photo-op.
>> We've done a couple of these in the last couple of years.
[Multiple voices speaking]
>> This way?
[Applause]