You know the cliche, often cited when one has a near-death experinece: “I saw my life flash before my eyes.”

Well, when you skydive from 22.7 miles above the earth, it turns out you have time for 6 minutes of life flashing before your eyes.

I’ve got a lot of living left to do; I’m not sure there are six minutes of highlights from my life worthy for that montage.

Six minutes is more like a short film, or an infomercial, than it is any fleeting vision of memories past.

But Felix Baumgartner, the Austian lunatic who will attempt this record-breaking skydive, is an adventurous guy, so six minutes shouldn’t be a problem for him.

Excerpt:

Baumgartner, who became the first person to cross the English Channel in freefall in 2003, will be lofted to a height of 36,575 metres in a helium balloon. After floating up for roughly three hours, he will open the door of a 1-tonne pressurised capsule, grab the handrails on either side of the exit, and step off, potentially breaking records for the highest parachute jump, as well as the fastest and longest freefall.

He will face extreme peril. He should reach supersonic speeds 35 seconds after he jumps, and the resulting shock wave “is a big concern”, the project’s technical director, Art Thompson, said at a press briefing on Friday. “In early aircraft development, they thought it was a wall they couldn’t pass without breaking apart. In our case, the vehicle is flesh and blood, and he’ll be exposed to some extreme forces.”

Still, project medical director Jonathan Clark noted there has been one known instance of a pilot surviving the destruction of a plane at three times the speed of sound. “We know it’s not just theoretically possible, it’s possible,” he said.

After falling for about six minutes, Baumgartner should open his parachute at roughly 1520 metres.

The jump height is above a threshold at 19,000 metres called the Armstrong line, where the atmospheric pressure is so low that fluids start to boil. “If he opens up his face mask or the suit, all the gases in your body go out of suspension, so you literally turn into a giant fizzy, oozing fluid from your eyes and mouth, like something out of a horror film,” Thompson explained. “It’s just seconds until death.”

via ‘Space diver’ to attempt first supersonic freefall – space – 22 January 2010 – New Scientist.