wow, over 4 minutes of freefall, that would seems like forever! congrats to Felix.

A great effort to be sure, but I still reckon the original jump by Joe Kittinger when he set the record for the highest freefall set in August, 1960 is a far greater achievement.

I agree with Martin. This is a phenomenal achievement but that first jump from 31km was done without a spacesuit and all the paraphernalia that this jump had.
All the same, congratulations to Felix.

Update to my comment. I meant that Joe went up in an open basket not that he went up completely unprotected.

Some one please tell me what happenned when he exceeded the speed of sound? Was there any sonic boom? If not, why not?

Boy for a guy making history he sure ain't much of a talker.. i saw the whole thing as close to live as possible, and how many times did ground control have to repeat requests before Felix would answer.. i mean.., -Hey Felix.. you're making history here- !.. Can you you try and SAY something?
And in response to the earlier comment about Joe Killinger, I recall something about that when I was a young 'un, but wouldn't he have been burned up by the atmosphere, even at * his* lower height?

@yawood Surely technology has done giant leaps in the last 52 years, but Kittinger HAD a spacesuit and a tiny hole in one of his gloves cost him the use of that hand... without a spacesuit back in 1960 he wouldn't have been there yesterday talking to Baumgartner. ;-)

When he fogged up, I could NOT help thinking of Frank Zappa..and the "Deadly yellow snow" ;-)

And.. one more thing. If we (in North America) no longer have a shuttle thanks to US cutbacks, why not have all our outdoing ISS 'nauts just, well, jump?

what a bummer! The only big unknown was what happens to the human body when you break the sound barrier. And he apparently did not even realized when he did it!
Still, a pretty cool jump!