A few locals scratched their heads this week as a bullet-shaped white capsule was unloaded at a steel hangar on the edge of town. Nearby, the prongs of a portable aluminum antenna jutted into the sky, as if someone were waiting for a call from outer space. And, a few days later, a diesel semi-trailer arrived, loaded with nine giant cylinders that looked like Godzilla's scuba tanks.
Perhaps even stranger was the scene over at the North Battleford casino, where every night an exotic visitor from the south of France commanded a table at the Gold Eagle restaurant. As a small army of experts and assistants jotted down engineering equations on napkins and carried on intense technical discussions in perfect, Parisian-inflected French, Michel Fournier, a.k.a. Monsieur Mach One, was at the centre of it all. A compact, suntanned dynamo of a man, he had come to this farming centre to break the world free-fall skydiving record.
Today, weather permitting, Mr. Fournier will put on a specially designed spacesuit, board a phone-booth-sized capsule connected to a giant helium balloon and climb to 130,000 feet - more than four times the height of Mount Everest. There, on the threshold of space, he will make some final checks, then step out the door to begin a 71/2-minute free fall that will accelerate him to more than 1,500 kilometres an hour. If all goes well, he will land, get some high-paid speaking gigs and take his place in aviation history.
Or he could die. But this is not a possibility he is willing to entertain.
"To me, the jump is normal," says Mr. Fournier, who runs 15 kilometres every day at the age of 64. "Amazing, yes. But it can be done. There is no reason why not. And I am ready."
HOW TO BE UNBEATABLE
If he succeeds, Mr. Fournier will become the skydiving equivalent of Sir Edmund Hillary, setting new records for the highest jump, longest freefall, fastest speed, and highest altitutude for a human balloon flight. His achievement may be equalled, but not bested. "No one can go higher," he says.
He's right, at least for now, since his planned jump altitude represents the outer limit of helium balloon performance. (Although rockets can go higher, they are not a viable skydiving platform because the jumper would be going the same speed as the rocket and burn up while travelling through the atmosphere, like a space shuttle stripped of its protective tiles.)
Leaping from the edge of space is not a casual matter. By 15,000 feet, most humans pass out from a lack of oxygen. At 62,000 feet, without a pressurized spacesuit, the blood will boil in your veins because the atmospheric pressure is so low. The temperature can drop to minus 65 Celsius.
THE PERSONAL COST
For Mr. Fournier, none of these are showstoppers. "You have to plan," he says. "You have to prepare."
That is an understatement. Mr. Fournier has spent more than 15 years and an estimated $12-million on his high-altitude skydiving quest, which he has dubbed Le Grand Saut ("En anglais, Le Super Jump," he notes).
The personal costs have been considerable. Mr. Fournier, who lives on his French military pension, has sold everything he owns, including his furniture, an antique weapons collection and the Provence villa he built for his retirement.
He spends his time fundraising and following his unique training regimen, which includes repetitive skydives, running, yoga, sessions in a low-pressure chamber and hours spent staring at a single point on the wall, to help him develop the mental focus he will need during his long balloon ride into the stratosphere.
"I have to be like steel!" he says, "No diversions! No mistakes! Rien!"
Mr. Fournier originally planned to do the jump in his native France, but after authorities said no, citing safety concerns, he went looking for a new location. He found permission to jump and an ideal setting in North Battleford: an airport that was built as a Second World War training base, but now goes days at a time without seeing an airplane, surrounded by empty prairie.
