Along with more than 3 billion spectators, Art Thompson’s anxiety grew as he intensely watched monitors in a packed control room in New Mexico. Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner was about to leap from a capsule, 128,560 feet (24.5 miles) above the earth’s surface. On Oct. 14, 2012, 50 seconds after stepping off the capsule ledge, Baumgartner broke the sound barrier, reaching speeds of 843.6 miles per hour (Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound). He broke the record for the highest freefall, largest manned balloon (at 30 million cubic feet), and highest balloon flight that Col. Joe Kittinger set on Aug. 16, 1960. Thompson, 64, of Sage Cheshire and A2ZFX is the eclectic genius behind a large number of projects spanning an incredibly diverse portfolio. He was responsible for the design, engineering, and building of the Red Bull Stratos pressurized capsule along with the life support system, technical …