Interview with Record Breaker Alan Eustace

On display at our Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, is the suit that Alan Eustace wore on his record-breaking freefall jump. Eustace jumped from an altitude of 41,419 meters (135,890 feet) in October 2014 to capture the world record—previously held by Felix Baumgartner.

Eustace, former senior vice president of knowledge at Google, was on hand to see the unveiling of the new display. He kindly agreed to answer some of our questions.   

What got you interested in breaking this record?
I was mostly interested in stratospheric exploration. My background is as an engineer, sky diver, and pilot. So, I’ve always read about what it was like to do these kinds of records. But, the key thing was I grew up in the 60s and 70s when there was an Apollo program. Everybody wanted to be an astronaut when I was growing up; hundreds of thousands of applicants and only a handful get selected. I never really thought I’d have a chance to see space. About four years before the record was broken I had this idea and I played with it. In the end, it allowed an ordinary human to basically see a view not exactly like the astronauts, but certainly the darkness of space, the curvature of the Earth. It was a special moment. The commercialization of this space and individual people potentially being able to do things like that, it’s kind of an amazing time.

Tell us about your team. What were the key roles and how did you work together?
The key thing for me was I had this idea. I worked on it about a year by myself just trying to scribble down, searching, doing all these Google searches and find out what was possible. Then I talked to a friend of mine, he did the XPRIZEs and other kinds of stuff, and I asked is there somebody that knows about life support systems for stratospheric exploration? He gave me the name of Taber MacCallum from Paragon Space Development Corporations. Turned out to be the perfect guy. He had an adventurous background, but also they built toxic environment suits … and space environment suits. So, I got the perfect guy.

Together we recruited Julian Nott, who actually has a capsule right over here, who knows about the balloon systems. And then, we went to United Parachute Technologies for the parachute side. Then Taber knew the people that make spacesuits, including ILC Dover, and so he approached them to see if we could get the suit. So, that was the start. Just starting with Taber and working our way out to get all the people that were necessary to pull it off.

How did you test this stuff before you got to the actual record-setting jump?
Testing was extensive. We did probably over 200 tests and they all built up on each other. So for instance, the suit itself had solo tests. We took balloons, but we had dummies that were basically about the same weight that we took up to altitude. We had small tests on the communications systems, like we’d find a mountain and we’d put something on it and then we’d try to basically be able to understand that far away. We did tests that were thermal tests where we had a giant refrigerator and we had a liquid nitrogen tank, and we basically poured liquid nitrogen in and circulated it around to see if this suit with me in it could take temperatures down to over -110 Fahrenheit. We had tons of tests, and that was good because at the end we had a lot of confidence that our systems were really working.

How did you muster the courage to attempt something like this?
You know, it wasn’t so much courage. Because I’m an engineer, I have this underlying belief that if you select the right people on the team, and if they design something well enough, and build it, and you’ve tested it completely then it will work exactly as you say it’s going to work. I tell people, when you walk on an airplane you’re not crossing your fingers saying, “I sure hope it flies,” because you know it’s going to fly because you’ve put the time and effort into it. For me, that’s what it was like with this; build it, test it, get the right people, and then you get a real opportunity to do it for real. My heart rate was low, I had a complete belief in the system.

What’s a question you don’t get asked that you wish you did?
I think the thing that most people think [is] that you look back on it and, you know, it’s about the record and the chest beating and stuff like that, but that’s not it at all. I look back on it and I remember the team and the details. There are things on this suit that everybody on the team will know that we actually redesigned five times, and you look at it and it’s just one thing, you know, you wouldn’t even see it, but it’s super important. For me, it’s the team and what I know the team did to basically design and redesign and test every single piece of this suit. It’s an amazing engineering invention. It’s got a huge amount of redundancy in it. So for me, it’s the details, the engineering, and the team part that will stick with me forever.

What are some details when people come and see the suit in person that they should be sure to not miss?
There are tons of little things. There’s two sets of gloves here and they’re heated, but there are also over mittens because in the testing we actually way over-designed the heating system, but there’s one thumb that is missing and one thumb that is there. People would ask me, “why is there asymmetry?” The reason is, in an emergency if I was to land in a place and my team didn’t get to me in time, what I need to be able to do is depressurize the suit and then I have to reach behind me and there’s one clip with tiny, tiny little knobs on it, and I have to be able to reach it, squeeze it, lift it, and then be able to take that helmet off. And I not only have to be able to do that in one position like lying face down, but I have to be able to do it on my side and on my back. In our testing we realized that I had to be able to do it 20 times in each position. What ended up happening was I couldn’t do it. Late in the process I was just too tired to be able to do it, and we figured out that if I just took that thumb away and gave myself just a tiny bit more dexterity I could take it off in all positions, so that’s how it ended up.

You got to see Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit when you visited us last year. What was it like to see that suit in person?
Oh, it was really, really cool. They laid it out on a table and it was just beautiful. I mean, they’ve got a bunch of people around you to make sure you don’t touch this thing, but it’s almost an uncontrollable urge to touch it. It was really nice because the suit is actually very similar in architecture to this [Eustace} suit. So I can see all these similarities like the way the joints are.

Some of the layers are actually quite different so you could see that. But, it was really fun to do the compare and contrast of this suit. But what’s special about that suit is if you look closely the Moon dust is actually still embedded in that suit, you can see it in the weave if you look really closely. And if you look closely his checklists were actually sewn to his arm. So, the final checklist that he did was sewn to his arm, so you got to read the same checklist that he got to do when he was on the Moon surface. It was really special, I was almost in tears.

What does it mean to you to have your suit on display at the National Air and Space Museum?
It’s really exciting. I mean you look around at the history of aviation and there’s just so many amazing, interesting artifacts and history here. I don’t know, I love everything about aviation, I love everything about science, I love everything about flying. For me this is the world’s largest candy store. And not just for me, but for the team. Having something at the National Air and Space Museum is just so meaningful. You’re alongside all these amazing accomplishments and history. Also just the fact that it’s going to be here forever, there’s a certain amount of permanence. Tomorrow morning the team is going to be here and we’re all going to stand around and we’re all going to look at something that we all put our heart and soul into, it’s going to be fun.

What’s one thing the Museum is missing that you think we should have?
Oh man, I can’t really … I mean, it’s got everything. You go from the Wright flyer days to modern jet aircraft. For me, the thing that is most amazing about history is the time scale that it happens. In World War I, you were really talking about very slow, wooden aircraft that were primitive, and then 22 years later we’re flying P-51 Mustangs. That transition, to me, is one of the most exciting and interesting periods of scientific discovery driven by, obviously, a global crisis. So for me, it’s not that you don’t have the right things, it’s somehow the idea that in a very short period of time we can make these tremendous advances. And also just looking at places, seeing like the SR-71, this amazing airplane that can go at the speed of sound, and you look at it and then realize this was in 1960. To me, that’s incredible. Don’t change a thing.