Behind the World Record that Helps the Children of America's Finest

A five-person crew from The Alpha 5 Project recently set a new Guinness World Record, raising $1 million for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation with the highest ever formation skydive.

“It was the most surreal experience of my life being up that high,” said CMSgt. Brandon Daugherty, a U.S. Air Force reservist, pararescueman and the project lead.

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“And the calmness watching all the different colors throughout the atmosphere. As the sun was coming up and looking over the state of New Mexico, just seeing how beautiful it was.

The four pararescuemen and adventurer Larry Connor, 74 — an astronaut and deep-sea diver — ascended to 38,067 feet in a giant balloon inflated to almost 115 feet tall. It was the largest balloon ever manufactured in the U.S.

Then, they jumped into temperatures of almost minus 50 degrees and linked arms to make a human circle formation, which they held for 11 seconds. The freefall down to 4,000 feet, when their parachutes opened, took two minutes and 20 seconds, during which time they reached speeds of 190 mph.

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The five landed some 14 miles from the launch site. It was the highest ever HALO (high altitude, low opening) formation skydive, with back-up from a balloon pilot, an oxygen technician and a ground staff of about 60.

Connor, pilot of the Axiom Space Ax-1 Mission and founder of the real estate investment firm The Connor Group, was the only non-veteran who jumped.

He lauded the pararescuemen, telling AARP Experience Counts: “They’re the best of the best. They train day in, day out, month in, month out to do extremely difficult and challenging missions. These men have literally given their adult lives to protect America. I think we as Americans owe a huge debt of gratitude to these brave men.”

For Daugherty and retired CMSgt. Chris Lais, a former USAF pararescueman — who work together at Operator Solutions, a Florida-based commercial space flight rescue company — it was all in a day’s work. “It’s something we train for in the military” said Daugherty, who has been on seven combat deployments and made around 600 jumps. "We go in really high."

Lais, who retired in 2021 after 14 years as a pararescueman, told AARP Experience Counts, “Over the past 15 months, I did more jumping than I spent probably the last four or five years in the Air Force.” The other two jumpers were MSgt. Rob Dieguez and Jimmy Petrolia, who retired in the same rank.

There were five training phases, including in wind tunnels that simulated free falls and around 100 practice jumps.