CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- His blood could boil. His lungs could
overinflate. The vessels in his brain could burst. His eyes could
hemorrhage.

And, yes, he could break his neck while jumping from a mind-boggling altitude of 23 miles.

But the risk of a gruesome death has never stopped "Fearless
Felix" Baumgartner in all his years of skydiving and skyscraper
leaping, and it's not about to now.

Next Monday over New Mexico, he will attempt the highest, fastest
free fall in history and try to become the first skydiver to break the
sound barrier.

"So many unknowns," Baumgartner says, "but we have solutions to survive."

The 43-year-old former military parachutist from Austria is hoping to
reach 690 mph, or Mach 1, after leaping from his balloon-hoisted
capsule over the desert near Roswell.

He will have only a pressurized suit and helmet for protection as he
tries to go supersonic 65 years after Chuck Yeager, flying an
experimental rocket plane, became the first human to go faster than the
speed of sound.

Doctors, engineers and others on Baumgartner's Red Bull-sponsored
team have spent as much as five years studying the risks and believe
they have done everything possible to bring him back alive. He has
tested out his suit and capsule in two dress rehearsals, jumping from 15
miles in March and 18 miles in July.

Baumgartner will be more than three times higher than the cruising
altitude of jetliners when he hops, bunny-style, out of the capsule and
into a near-vacuum where there is barely any oxygen and less than 1
percent of the air pressure on Earth.If all goes well, he will reach the speed of sound in about half a minute at an altitude of around 100,000 feet. Then he will start to slow
as the atmosphere gets denser, and after five minutes of free fall, he
will pull his main parachute. The entire descent should last 15 to 20
minutes.

He will be rigged with cameras that will provide a live broadcast of
the jump via the Internet, meaning countless viewers could end up
witnessing a horrific accident.

Baumgartner is insistent on going live with his flight.