So You Want to Skydive From Space?

Endless threats: A loss of pressure in a space diver's suit could result in decompression sickness.

-  JENNIFER LEMAN

IN 2014, ALAN EUSTACE, THEN THE SENIOR vice president of knowledge at Google, dropped from a hot-air balloon floating 135,899 feet above Earth's surface. During the four-minute and 27 second plummet, the tech mogul reached speeds of over 800 miles per hour and shattered Red Bull stuntman Felix Baumgartner's previous skydiving record, established just two years earlier.

Since U.S. Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger's famous free-fall from 102,800 feet above Earth's surface in 1960, adrenaline junkies have sought higher and higher altitudes from which to jump, inching ever closer to the Kármán line, or the boundary between our atmosphere and space. So far, neither Eustace, Baumgartner, nor anyone else who has careened down from the heavens has made it anywhere near the boundary, which lies roughly 62 miles above Earth's surface, or 327,360 feet. So what would it actually take to skydive from space?

THE EDGE OF SPACE