Cheryl Stearns -- StratoQuest -- Press Clips

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http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/6451932.htm

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Skydiver delays record leap
Cheryl Stearns still hopes to jump from Earth's upper reaches -- somewhere over Wichita -- but timing and money must be worked out.
BY ALAN BJERGA
Eagle Washington bureau

WASHINGTON - Cheryl Stearns --a woman who owns cats named Boeing and Cessna -- would love to set a new world skydiving record over Wichita.

But Uncle Sam and slow fund raising changed her plans to attempt a 130,000-foot jump from the upper atmosphere as part of the city's celebration of the centennial of flight in September.

Instead, the target date is October 2004, said Sue Abreu, who works with Stearns at StratoQuest, a business formed to support the attempted jump.

That will give Stearns, 47, more time to raise the $7 million it would take to train and prepare for the dive out of a 25-story helium balloon from a place above 99 percent of the Earth's air.

It will also give her more time to cope with a reality Stearns, an Army Reserve officer, has had to deal with more lately: multiple call-ups and deployments.

Last winter, Stearns was notified she could be deployed to the Persian Gulf.

That never happened, Abreu said, but it did mess up Stearns' schedule and interrupted fund raising to the point that it was necessary to delay the jump.

"It just threw everything into a mess," she said.

Stearns, who lives outside Fayetteville, N.C., also receives brief call-ups to serve on the U.S. Army's Golden Knights parachute team, of which she was the first female member. Currently, she's in Russia for competition, though just last month she set a record for jump accuracy in St. Louis, Mo., in a civilian performance.

Stearns is still planning to attempt the record jump over Wichita, Abreu said. By then, she added, StratoQuest should have raised enough money.

Deployments, of course, are less predictable, she said.

"Everything about the event is tentative until it all comes together," Abreu said. If Stearns is called up for three to six months, that could push the date back again, she said. And if the money doesn't come around, willingness alone won't put her in the sky.

In the meantime, she said, Stearns is grateful that Wichita is staying patient.

"She appreciates that the people do understand it takes a long time to come together," she said.

Also see http://stratoquest.com/

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[phonics1981 0]

Has Michel Fournier not scheduled this for september also?

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"Ive given up on sigs cos I make a mess of them!"
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This LINK hot off the presses.

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One giant leap for gutsy vet

Parachutist preps for record-breaking dive from the fringes of space
By BILL KAUFMANN, CALGARY SUN

The Spacediver is psyching himself up.

Judging from the animated voice at the other end of the phone, ex-French army colonel Michel Fournier is just about ready to take humankind's greatest plunge.

The trick of falling to Earth from the fringes of space, he acknowledges, is to first reach the heights without being burned.

"I'm a parachutist and have always dreamt of this kind of adventure -- it's the realization of the dream of Icarus, in some ways," says Fournier, 58.

If all goes according to plan later this month, Fournier's pressurized gondola -- resembling a NASA-friendly hot-water heater swathed in UV and cosmic-ray repellent -- will emerge from a hangar at North Battleford Municipal Airport.

The time: Preferably before dawn when the central Saskatchewan winds are weakest.

Inside, cocooned in a high-tech space suit resistant to temperatures in the heavens dipping to -70F, will be Fournier, who'll be pulled aloft by a 95-metre-high helium-filled balloon of extremely thin polyethylene.

He'll ascend to outer space, or 40 km above the Earth in a time of 2.5 hours.

From there, he'll step outside the climate-controlled capsule and into the history books.

It's the early portion of the balloon ride that poses the greatest danger, says Fournier, even though tumbling into an uncontrolled spin on the way down, at 140 r.p.m., would be fatal. Don Cameron, the maker of Fournier's balloon, agrees.

"The difficulty with this kind of balloon is it's very thin plastic and if it suffers any damage on takeoff, it could mean an aborted flight," said Cameron, managing director of Cameron Balloons of Bristol, England.

But the excitement of being part of such an exclusive endeavour is hard to conceal for Cameron.

"It's an amazing exploit -- I just hope he does it safely," he says.

For Fournier, realizing his dream and exorcising the frustration of last September's abortive attempt just outside Saskatoon is tonic enough to overcome any fears.

"There's always going to be a risk but I'm surrounded by a technical team that has developed a tremendous amount of knowledge -- I know exactly what to expect," says the veteran of more than 8,300 jumps.

"We're thinking of putting a big 'X' on the ground for him to shoot for," said Claude-Jean Harel, his Canadian project co-ordinator.

Leaping headfirst into the void, Fournier's body will accelerate to speeds between 1,200 and 1,600 km/h, or mach 1.5 -- the first time such a speed has been achieved by a human being outside an aircraft.

The 5-ft.-7 speed demon can hardly wait.

"I'm convinced it will be a sensation of great happiness, joy and ecstasy and a rush of adrenaline in realizing I'm actually living it," he says emphatically.

"But I'll also be busy paying attention to the angle of my body."

And he downplays the hazards of the plummet, such as how a premature release of a parachute would shred his body at 25,000 metres.

"When astronauts (walk) in space, they travel at 8 km a second, so I should be fine," he says.

The six-minute descent will be broken by the release of his parachute at 1,000 metres.

On the way down, his body will be rigged with a cornucopia of scientific monitoring equipment, gauging for the first time how the human body reacts to breaking the sound barrier.

Preparing for his lofty mission has included torturing himself inside cold chambers to measure the body's tolerance to cold.

"The cold control exercises were the most gruelling ... I placed my hands in ice for long periods of time to see how well I can control my sensations," he says.

Though Fournier will taste the solitude on the edges of space, he's not alone in his quest for scientific and personal accomplishment.

American skydiver Cheryl Stearns, 47, is also in the running for the record books and plans to take the big plunge in Sept., 2004.

Fournier downplays the rivalry, saying the two complement each other.

"She's been over at my house (in Bordeaux) and there's a healthy sportsmanship," he says.

"I'll be the first man to do it and she'll be the first woman."

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[robskydiv 0]

Thankyou Quade for the update. This is something that I've been trying to keep up with since I first read about Cheryl Stearns' Stratoquest.

[Zenister 0]

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If all goes according to plan later this month, .....

The time: Preferably before dawn when the central Saskatchewan winds are weakest.

anyone got and idea of the actual date? not that i'll be there to see it, but i'd like to be aware when its happening...I've been waiting for this for a while too..

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Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

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anyone got and idea of the actual date?

Because this is so weather dependant, my guess would be that they have a period of time (maybe a week or two) set aside for the attempt and will wait until the weather forecast falls within some predetermined limits.

I'm almost certain that within a few moments of launch we'll know that the attempt has begun.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver