MISSION

The Berkshires were rocking their boldest autumn colors.

But I hardly noticed.

En route from Massachusetts to New York, I was alerted by my smartypants phone that something BIG was about to happen.

An Austrian paratrooper turned pilot turned daredevil was being propelled by a 55-story balloon to the perimeter of space. Journeying inside a capsule, the pilot was traveling 128,000 feet to the top of the world.

I had heard about this stunt when it failed to materialize a few days earlier. But I didn't know the details. Flipping from news site to science site, I gathered information as the white balloon gathered altitude.

Seems the pilot, Felix Baumgartner, and his team spent five years preparing for the pioneering jump. The daredevil's life depended on a 100-pound pressurized flight suit and helmet; his only barriers to the lethally thin atmosphere and brutally frigid temperatures near space. Failure of the pressure suit would cause Baumgartner's blood to boil. 

Death in fifteen seconds.

Baumgartner also risked spinning out of control and losing consciousness once he jumped from the capsule and fell to earth. Imagine. This person was going to step into space fully aware that one daring step could lead to a horrific death.

Real Rocket Science and Real Danger in Real Time.

Mesmerized, I watched the door of Baumgartner's capsule open. Pressure equalized with the atmosphere outside as the space man moved forward and looked down at the spinning blue-brown earth beneath him.

He muttered something unintelligible. Then he saluted and jumped.

Hurtling through the sky at speeds more than 830 mph, Baumgartner plummeted to earth in a four-minute, twenty second free-fall. Veering into an uncontrollable spin at one point, he pulled his arms closer to his body, regaining control. By the time he deployed his parachute for the final mile drift to Earth (where he would make a running landing onto the New Mexico desert,) Felix Baumgartner had survived a record-breaking, sound-barrier-shattering 24-mile fall from the edge of space.

Eight million people watched in real time. Four of those folks watched on a smartphone suction-cupped to the dashboard of an SUV speeding across the Berkshires. 

While that, in and of itself, is worthy of a whole blog of wow, it is not the story of this blog, dear Reader.

This is the story of a man - a self-proclaimed hot-headed, demanding daredevil who, growing more humble with age, knowledge and experience, persevered for half a decade to achieve an unimaginably difficult mission. 

A man who worked to conquer acute claustrophobia that nearly halted the mission in its earliest stages. 

A man who maintained his composure and discipline even as his visor fogged three minutes into the fall, and his body launched into a violent spin that threatened to send blood rushing to his head, rendering him despondent and out of control.
 

"There was a period of time where I really thought, 'I am in trouble,' " Baumgartner said. "But after a couple of seconds, I had that feeling I'm getting it under control. And I did," he added. "And that's why I broke the speed of sound today."

It's likewise the story of a team that prepared diligently for the mission, even while acknowledging that Baumgartner's survival was not guaranteed. Prepping the pressurized flight suit and helmet with sensors and recorders to measure everything from speed to heart rate, the team hoped to learn if similar suits and helmets could someday save astronauts' lives should manned spacecrafts malfunction in space.

Finally, it's the story of Colonel Joe Kittinger. A pilot who jumped from 102,800 feet as part of a U.S. Air Force mission in 1960, Kittinger was the sole person from Mission Control who remained in constant contact with Baumgartner as he attempted to break standing free-fall records - records that Kittinger held for half a century.

Joe Kittinger took off his headphones as Felix Baumgartner landed in the desert and dropped to his knees, raising his fists in victory. Praising the pilot, and all those who helped to make the mission a success, Kittinger said, "It was a team effort, and Felix did a fantastic job...It was an honor for all of us to work with this brave guy."

Imagine, dear Reader, if the characters featured in the story above were President and Congress.

Imagine if the mission was Grow the Economy. Reduce the Deficit and Carbon Emissions. Revitalize Entitlement Programs, Healthcare, Manufacturing. 

Imagine a government filled with leaders who confronted fears, rather than stoking them.

Imagine teams of legislators working together, making difficult decisions and taking calculated risks that lead to progress, while inspiring and aiding future generations.

As Felix Baumgartner stood in darkness and silence on the edge of space, looking at the globe spinning beneath him, he surely could not see wars raging, earth warming, and politicians debating.

Humbled, focused, and intent on surviving, Baumgartner looked down and said, “The whole world is watching now, and I wish they could see what I see. Sometimes you have get up really high (to realize) how small you are.”

If only we could tuck our leaders into space suits and capsules, and balloon them to the edge of space to look upon the world they impact day after day.

Surely they'd realize the gravity of their mission to serve and protect.

They may even be humbled and focused enough to understand that the citizens on one small corner of the spinning globe beneath them are not 47%-ers who refuse to take personal responsibility and care for their lives. They're not 1%-ers who turn their backs on the less fortunate, or binders full of women seeking employment.

They're actually binders and binders full of citizens longing for leadership and compromise.

Sixteen days till the election. The politicians in space fantasy isn't going to happen.

But there is still time for Congress to convene and waive the citizenship requirement for the American Presidency.

Baumgartner and Kittinger for President and Vice President in 2012.

Wish it on a star.