Just when you thought you knew what Google was up to, one of their executives shook it up. Alan Eustace, the Senior Vice President of Google, broke the world record for high altitude sky diving (a record that was last set only two years ago by Felix Baumgartner), reaching an astonishing 135,890 feet.
He was carried up by a balloon designed by a team of scientists and engineers that Eustace had been working with for around three years, even before Baumgartners’ record setting drop.
The balloon carried him nearly 136,000 feet before dropping him from the top of the stratosphere. He reached speeds of up to 822 miles per hour on the way down and even caused a small sonic boom which could be heard by people on the ground.
The fall to the ground lasted 15 minutes and spanned a distance of over 25 miles.
“It was beautiful. You could see the darkness of space and the layers of the atmosphere, which I had never seen before,” Eustace explained in an interview with the New York Times.
Eustace was equipped with the most up-to-date equipment provided to him by his team of sponsors who donated millions of dollars to his expedition.