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Interesting guy, and a great talk.
This is a favourite subject of mine, and I've got a decent library on these jumps, and stratospheric ballooning.
Since Joe Kittinger did it, and Nick Piantinida did it a few years later but died, there's been an untold number of guys like this bloke talk themselves up about doing it. There's at least four blokes in the planning/testing/training stages right now, and one of them is Australian.
Will any of them even put in a true attempt? Maybe. Will anyone succeed, yes probably, one day. Will people die? Yes.
Two of my favourite books on this are:
"The Pre-Astronauts - Manned Ballooning on the Theshold of Space"
and
"Magnificent Failure - Freefall from the Edge of Space", both by Craig Ryan.
The latter is a very detailed account of Nick Piantinida's three jumps, and his ultimate demise. A very sad story, but extraordinarily interesting. It gives a fantastic insight into the mind of a person like him, and his drive and ambition. They are utterly selfish people, but what a boring world we would live in if not for people like Nick Piantinida.
Cheers,
Jason.
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