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The Google Engineer Who Set The Skydiving Record At 58 - EP 83 Alan Eustace

July 22, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Alan Eustace holds the world record for the highest skydive—135,890 feet—set in 2014. Most people assume Felix Baumgartner, the Red Bull-sponsored jumper, still holds that record. Eustace, a computer scientist and former Google executive, did it with a radically different approach: no capsule, no live stream, and almost no public attention. In this conversation, he walks through the engineering philosophy that made the jump possible, the history that inspired it, and the lessons he carries into his current work exploring the ocean.

The engineering problem, not the daredevil stunt

Eustace had been skydiving since 1975 and was fascinated by the history of high-altitude jumps, especially Joe Kittinger’s 1960 record of 102,800 feet as part of Project Man High. Kittinger worked with John Paul Stapp, the Air Force doctor who strapped himself to rocket sleds at 800 mph to test human G-force tolerance—work that eventually led to seat belts in cars. Eustace saw the Red Bull Stratos project as an engineering puzzle, not a spectacle. His core insight was simple: why use a capsule when you already have a space suit? The capsule added weight, complexity, and risk at every transition point. He proposed a tandem parachute setup with oxygen tanks on the front, no passenger. That naive starting point led to three years of work, a team of dozens, and hundreds of tests.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 Timestamped Navigation Outline
  • 2 (00:00) **Episode Introduction** - Host Ashley Vance introduces Alan Eustace, the Google engineer who set the skydiving free fall record in 2014 at age 58
  • 3 (02:48) **The Origin of the Jump Idea** - Alan explains how his lifelong skydiving passion led him to consider breaking Joe Kittinger's 1960 record
  • 4 (09:55) **The Simpler Approach vs. Red Bull's Capsule** - Alan describes his core insight: why use a capsule when you already have a spacesuit?
  • 5 (11:44) **Joe Kittinger's Harrowing 1960 Jump** - The dramatic story of Kittinger's three Project Man High jumps and near-death experience
  • 6 (14:36) **The Pre-Astronaut Era's Risk Tolerance** - The 1950s-60s testing culture that made Apollo possible through extreme personal risk
  • 7 (17:43) **From Idea to Project** - Alan's 2011 decision to actually pursue the record after reading about Red Bull's effort

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Most people think that the Red Bull guy Felix Baumgartner holds the skydiving record. But this is not the case.

The real record-holder is Alan Eustace. In 2014, at age 58, the Google engineer rode a helium-filled balloon into the stratosphere and then fell back to Earth from 135,890 feet. Eustace’s fall lasted 4 minutes and 27 seconds, and he broke the sound barrier, reaching a max speed of 822 mph. And now, in a very rare appearance, Eustace has come on the podcast to discuss his adventure.

Baumgartner, who dropped from 128,852 feet, received tons of attention because Red Bull turned his jump into a media spectacle. Eustace, by contrast, came up with the plan for his jump and spacesuit at his kitchen table, paid for a small team to help him build his suit and then did his skydive with just a single reporter there as a witness.

This all fits with Eustace’s personality. He’s quite private and just goes about his work.

It took several months of begging to get Eustace on the show, and I don’t think he’s ever discussed his skydive in this type of detail before.

In this episode, we get into what drove a 58-year-old man to want to chase this feat, the rich history of stratosphere jumping and Eustace’s remarkable career as one of the key Google engineers who built the modern internet. We also hear Eustace’s thoughts on AI and his latest quest to search the ocean floor.

(I apologize for saying that Eustace jumped from space in the episode. It was the stratosphere. I was excited.)

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