Supersonic man

“You’ve got to be in the highest place to learn how small we are.”

After saying this, Felix Baumgartner, a 43-year-old Austrian skydiver, made a freefall from 39 kilometers in the stratosphere. After freefalling for four minutes and 20 seconds clad in safety gear and a helmet, he became the first person to break the sound barrier. He hit 1.24 Mach and 1,342 kilometers per hour in 49 seconds after jumping from a space capsule. Baumgartner broke the record set 52 years ago by Joseph Kittinger, a U.S. Air Force pilot who made a freefall of 982 kilometers per hour from 31.2 kilometers above the ground in 1960.

Fearless Felix faced a challenge in attempting his skydive. He had to decide between opening his parachute and surpassing the supersonic record. After thinking for a few seconds, he chose the latter to set a human milestone. A record eight million viewers watched his attempt aired live on YouTube. His homeland of Austria was excited. Even those skeptical about his skydive attempt, which cost 65 million U.S. dollars over five years, said the world needs more people like Felix.

If Baumgartner is the supersonic man who went up into the sky, another man dove to the world`s deepest point in the sea. James Cameron, 58, the wunderkind director of “Avatar,” prepared for seven years before going solo in a submarine to the bottom of the Mariana Trench near Guam. He took 156 minutes to reach the world`s lowest ocean point on March 26 this year. Cameron went to a depth of 10,898 kilometers, took photos and collected samples for marine biology research.

The Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training surveyed 5,922 students from the seventh to 11th grades. Most of the students chose elementary school teacher as their vocation of choice, followed by doctor and government official. Entrepreneur, which ranked fourth in the 2001 survey, and computer programmer, which was sixth, fell out of the top 20 in this year`s poll. How do Korean teenagers, who seek secure jobs, think of the man who dared to challenge human limits like Baumgartner? Perhaps they should remember certain lines from the song "The Impossible Dream" from the musical "Man of La Mancha": “To dream the impossible dream/to fight the unbeatable foe/to bear with unbearable sorrow/to run where the brave dare not go/to right the unrightable wrong/to love, pure and chaste, from afar/to try, when your arms are too weary/to reach the unreachable star!”

Editorial Writer Koh Mi-seok (mskoh119@donga.com)