Look Ma! I can fly!

We had to snip some shots of this guy taking a leap off the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Renowned B.A.S.E jumper Felix Baumgartner, shot to fame with some of his famous highlights: The dive off Christo Redentor statue in Rio de Janeiro and Petronas Towers in KL.

Out of curiosity I did some research and discovered B.A.S.E is an acroynm which stands for Building , Antenna, Span and Earth - the four types of fixed objects utilized for foot-launched skydives instead of the usual parachuting from a plane. This would mean launching off from lower altitudes as compared to sky-diving and that being the case, a reserve parachute is useless. If the first parachute fails on the jumper, that's it. Talk about extreme sports.
So what's the big story about some guy who decided he wanted to jump off the right arm of the statue of Jesus Christ in Brazil or the free-falling from the Petronas Towers? Turned out, most BASE jumps are not legalised. Applying for permit would take the kick out of it so they claimed. Naturally our little snip-snap yesterday was prompted by potential legal consequences if we went ahead and aired the Petronas jump in KL.

Austrian borned Felix Baumgartner bought himself a business suit, glasses and pretended to be a businessman as he walked into the commercial twin towers with his faked ID cards. With 1000 for bribes, he got to the 88th storey, parachute in his suitcase and with a little camera, he filmed himself launching off from a window-washer crane. 8 seconds of free-fall from the world's tallest building then in 1999. The best part was watching him land on the ground, did a victory sign, rolled up his parachute and walked away from it scout-free!
From the $1000 bribes and fake ID cards, it's little wonder the Malaysian authorities would demand such clips be edited out. It's outright an embarrassment!

Reading through internet posted articles on Baumgartner, I was quite amused he made a remark about the jump off the statue of Christ that goes with the line of thought that he would be fine since he was jumping off the Right arm of Jesus. I'm sure fellow Christians would be able to know why. =)

Cant get enough of the man? You can read more about him and his adventures at http://www.felixbaumgartner.com/gross/