by Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd

Watch "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer" Tuesday at 5pm on CNN for more of Brian Todd's interview with space jumper Felix Baumgartner.

(CNN) - He has been dubbed "Fearless Felix," but the Austrian skydiver who broke the sound barrier last week was almost derailed by a fear he had never before encountered: claustrophobia.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Situation Room's Brian Todd, Felix Baumgartner said that as he did longer and longer test runs, wearing his restrictive skydiving suit, his anxieties got worse and worse.
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Roswell, New Mexico (CNN) - Skydiver Felix Baumgartner is aiming to pull off a record-breaking free-fall jump from the edge of space Tuesday, wearing nothing but a space suit, a helmet and a parachute.

His goal is not only to jump from a higher altitude than anyone ever has - 120,000 feet, more than three times the cruising altitude of the average airliner. He also hopes to be the first person to break the sound barrier, without the aid of anything besides the space suit. At that altitude, the thin air provides so little resistance that after just 40 seconds, he is expected to be free-falling faster than 690 miles an hour.

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