Free Republic

SASKATOON -- A French parachutist and his international team watched in disbelief Monday morning as the helium-filled balloon designed to carry the man to record-breaking heights burst during its launch at the North Battleford municipal airport. "It was over in seconds. The balloon was launched and all of a sudden it cracked open and the helium went out," said Claude-Jean Harel, the volunteer Canadian co-ordinator of Michel Fournier's Super Jump. "People had tears in their eyes. People worked really hard. It's very intense so when you have something like this happen, it's a shock." Fifty-nine-year-old Fournier, a former French...

A French is on the point of trying to cross the wall of the sound in free fall The French parachutist Michel Fournier is on the point of trying a jump of 40.000 meters above the large Canadian plains, with the ambition to become the first man to cross the wall of the sound in free fall, indicated Thursday its attached of press. Eleven months after having had to be solved to defer to 2003 its tests, for lack of favorable weather conditions, this old ordering army, 59 years old, reinstalled since August 11 its headquarters on a site...