Until you do it, it’s still an unknown...

No matter how well you prepare, and how much you might think you understand a risk, there is a special category of risks which are worthy of the title...

"Until you do it, it's still an unknown." 

One of my personal heroes made history with just this type of risk. Joe Kittinger rode a balloon to 102,800 feet (31,300 m) then stepped out into space.

He fell for four minutes and 36 seconds, reaching a maximum speed of 614 miles per hour (988 km/h) before opening his parachute at 18,000 feet (5,500 m). Pressurization in his right glove malfunctioned during the ascent, and his right hand swelled up to twice its normal size. He set records for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest drogue-fall (four minutes), and fastest speed by a human being through the atmosphere.  To give you an idea, just how amazing this is, he set these records on August 16th, 1960 and they are yet to be beaten.

That could be about to change however, with a "giant leap for one man" later this year. Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner will jump from a pressurized capsule under a balloon at 120,000 feet wearing  only a spacesuit.

Felix Baumgartner and Joe Kittinger beside the capsule that will take Baumgartner into space

Jonathan Clark, the medical director for Red Bull Stratos, the team assembled to help Baumgartner reach his lofty goal, gets credit for coining a new category of risk management, describing this amazing feat "Until you do it, it's still an unknown." As he plummets 23 miles in the highest skydive ever, Baumgartner will possibly become the first person to break the sound barrier in free fall but the uncertainties are countless:

• What happens when Baumgartner encounters the shockwaves that will occur when he breaks the speed of sound?
• How many things have to go right for him to succeed?
• What's the likelihood of everything going right?
• What are the consequences of a failure in components x, y or z?
• Instability in freefall is one of the biggest risks for normal skydiving. Only one person in history has jumped from this height and instability plagued much of his fall until he opened his drogue shute. 

The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France, who made the first recorded public jump in 1783. Since then parachuting has evolved in many ways but it’s still unclear what will happen when Baumgartner steps out of his capsule. Whatever happens, it's a groundbreaking feat - in more than 50 years no one has been able to (or been courageous enough) to free-fall from higher than 102,800 feet.

“Until you do it, it’s still an unknown,”