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Sub-Orbital Skydiving
igz writes: "Someone is trying to set the world record for highest freefall, from over 31 miles above the Earth! There is no atmosphere up there, so speeds of up to 1.5 Mach are expected. Check it here." Whether this is insanity or courage is up to you, but it sure sounds like a fun ride. Cheryl Stearns is the insane / courageous diver, and she will jump wearing a pressure suit to counter the lack of air at (gulp!)165,000 feet up.
You are right.
Jak Din
"As I always say, why jack-off when you can jack-in!" - Plughead from "Circuitry Man" (1990)
To defend my position a little:
/. only at work, while working, so of course I'm not going to be able to read 'every' post to check if it is a troll.....but the "blatant obvious" troll sometimes deserves a lashing, no?
I read
Thanks for your understanding on this matter.
Jak Din
"As I always say, why jack-off when you can jack-in!" - Plughead from "Circuitry Man" (1990)
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I don't think you read it right:
Being the first person to achieve subterranean supersonic travel: priceless.
Subterranean, as in, underground. The humorous value comes from the fact that any person foolish enough to do this would hit the ground, keep on going, and actually travel faster than the speed of sound in dirt.
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Actually, the sound of speed does not depend only on temperature: c=squaroot(gamma.R.T) where T is the temperature. R is a constant but gamma also changes with temperature and pressure.
Furthermore, over 25.000m, the temperature increases with altitude.
From books, you can get something like:
Speed of sound at 00000m: 340m/s
Speed of sound at 10000m: 300m/s
Speed of sound at 20000m: 295m/s
Speed of sound at 30000m: 305m/s
So it does not vary that much.
And aiplanes normally fly at around 10.000 meters
So technically, you're wrong! But you know...
-- JC
--JC
...meaning continuing to go faster than the speed of sound for a (very) short time following the impact.
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Sex with aliens. That's the only thing I could possibly think of.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Well I'm not going to speak for you, but I don't like being thought of as a passenger of a parachute. I like flying my body. Parachutist implies that the primary thing we do is to ride under canopy. But, for a lot of us, it's about freefall. Not about the thing that allows freefall to happen. Canopy rides are fun, but the point is body flying! Feel free to disagree, tho.
Yes, but would you go so far as to say you get pissed off when a whuffo fails to use proper terminology?
Blues yourself,
Dan
All I can say is that this chica must've rolled really low on her INT or WIS rolls when she was created.
Roll saving throws versus DEX to avoid air turbulence. Fail, a hole is ripped in your spacesuit at 165,000 feet up, bam, you're dead. Succeed, and roll save vs CON to avoid passing out.
Can you imagine what the GROUND must look like coming at you at Mach 1 though?!??!?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I think she should surf down like in Dark Star
sig's not here
the sound barrier without being in a vehicle (not including deceleration upon impact)
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If all you're doing is "flipping thru", yeah sure I can finish any mahjong game within 1 minute.
All I can say is, the AI of your mahjong program must be very dumb.
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that just starts a bit like that and then goes:
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology...
"There's very little room for error," says Stearns. "This is not an easy endeavor - that's why it hasn't been done yet."
1. get pressurized suit
2. get plane really high
3. jump out of plane
Hitting the ground at Mack 1.5: Priceless
If a mime falls from 165,000 feet, does it make a sonic boom?
Patrick de Gayardon made many many things, but he didn't do this type of high-ballon jumps.
31 miles above the Earth? THAT's a long way down! She should take her Palm pilot with her in case she gets bored. You know, a quick hand of Mahjongg around 20,000 feet.
She's going to find life kinda boring after doing something like that, I would think. I mean, what would you do to top that??
Mach 1 is a slower speed way up there than down where airplanes normally fly.
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I know it says about 31 miles but 165,000 feet is actually 31 and a quarter miles.
Sorry to be anal but that's what I am.
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Crap, that's Mach, i hate netscapes fonts
The person who did this last took slightly more than 4 minutes to fall from 102k up. He broke the speed of sound for a bit as well. She will also.
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I've gotta see this -- send her up with a cam so we can watch the live feed! Crazy gal!
"C'mon, donkey-boy!!"
Crystalize your tears, dried upon The Cross
Blood drips on your pain, time to ride The Light
Thank you for saying that she is one one the sport's most important participants. The guy quoted in the article said she the most qualified FEMALE, implying that of course men are still superior.
That sounds a bit silly... Just because there isn't air to make sound, doesn't mean you can't compare an objects speed to what the speed of sound would be if there were air.
karma is for the weak >)
While she won't need the kind of shielding an orbiter requires, going at M1.5 is potentially still a warming experience.
I'm not suggesting it is necceccary a problem. It depends at what altitude this speed is achieved (as she falls she will actually slow down after she achieves local terminal velocity), as well as how long she is exposed to high friction.
For comparison: A f-15 can achieve M2.5 but is limited in endurance above 2.0-2.3 somwhere by thermal buildup (Go too fast too long and it overheats). A concorde is significantly longer due to thermal expansion after it's supersonic dash. So while she won't be burnt to a crisp, I wouldn't rule out that there might be some noticeable maybe even uncomfortable thermal effect.
And to you I say please read my original post! I said the sound barrier wouldn't really be a problem until she hits substantial air... but anyway, 31 miles up isn't a vacuum, that's only the stratosphere and that is where the ozone layer is located.
There's no need to get nasty.
This isn't as ludicrous as it sounds... although it is pretty funny. :-) People do actaully make "subterranean" jumps (from ground or air level down into sinkholes and caverns). It's generally considered much more dangerous (which is why people do it). I think you'd have to be insane to start 31 miles up and try to land (safely) several hundred feet below ground level.
He was the first human to reach mach 1 with out the assistances of mechanized means.. all gravity baby! I saw it on the Discovery channel, one of those "Need for Speed" shows. It's been well documented, as they had video footage of his jump from the ballon and a check to make sure he broke the sound barrier.
same shit being recycled..
I have done my 1000th jumps this year, and I do agree with you: the length of the jump and the sight would be incredible.
The heavy suit would be less fun though!
Isn't she going to need a drogue chute? (That's a small preliminary chute deployed to decrease speed a little _and_ pull a main chute). The NASA space capsules all used those, including the Apollo moon missions. Or will she use a drogue ring? (This is a ring around the risers that buffers sudden chute filling and hopefully prevents a blowout.) Even cooler would be a drougue chute followed by a backpack parasail... And will she broadcast RT?
Doesn't it take as much energy to stop a body in motion as it took to set it in motion?
Let's see now, an object as heavy as the shuttle, going 17,000 miles/hour. Now how much energy did it take to get it up to that speed?
Stopping it is impractical, unless you want to carry along another large supply of fuel (which makes getting that extra fuel into orbit even harder to begin with, we're talking something like $10,000 per pound here).
Of course, the idea of just stopping, and then slowly falling out of orbit might be okay if you have virtually unlimited energy available, ala Star Trek. (And sufficient propellent mass to expel at high speed -- or some other way to push or pull not involving expelling mass at high speed.)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Heh, I think the CRWdogs might have a problem with that one but I agree with you on the freefall, especially since I switched to freeflying 80 jumps ago. Then again, there is something to be said for a well executed canopy swoop...
Now.. does that mean it'll do mach1.5, or the equivalent of mach 1.5 at sea level? Mach changes with altitude.....
A simulation of the Kittinger dive is on the NOVA website. Plus they also show the famous picture of him jumping out of the gondola.
Also there is a really great book written by Craig Ryan called The Pre-Astronauts. The Pre-Astronauts is all about the history of high altitude skydiving. A cool quote by Alan Shepard from the book when asked if he would have done the Kittinger jump: "Hell no. Absolutely not."
Another cool fact is that Capt. Kittinger's boss during those high skyjumps was no other than John Paul Stapp the guy who is always in those famous pictures and movies of the rocket sled. Remember those pictures of a man's face being progressively made more distorted by g-forces? That's John Paul Stapp!
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Well, lets think about this logically.
The higher the altitude, the less dense the air is. Now, if I wasn't sleeping in my physics class, I believe that less dense materials transmit sound more slowly and more dense materials transmit sounds at a higher speed. Therefore, the speed of sound through a material such as wood or water is higher and the speed of sound through a gas is lower. I'm suspecting that the lower pressure at high altitudes would mean that the speed of sound would go down.
Bringing this to a logical extreme, in a vacuum, the speed of sound should be zero, which it is, since there is no material to transmit the sound at all.
So what happens if an ant attempts a jump from orbit? And what if Bugs Bunny hands the ant an anvil instead of a chute?
Just like the guy did who jumped from 102K up.
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The reason she'll be able to get up to mach 1.5 is that breaking the sound barrier at or around sea level causes a much more intense shockwave than it does at extreme altitude where the density of air is much lower. In fact if they're being correct about their calculation, mach 1.5 up there is a lower real airspeed than it is be down here. So no, won't hear a deafening boom as she pierces the atmosphere, cool as that would be. matt
This is from: http://www.skydivingmagazine.com/ques13.htm
Why isn't Kittinger's jump a high-altitude record?
Q. You said the highest jump ever was by E. Andreev from 80,360 feet in 1962. Why isn't Joseph
Kittinger's jump from 102,800 feet (April 16, 1960) considered the record?
A. We said the highest freefall was by Andreev. Kittinger used a drogue to help keep him from tumbling
and spinning during his famous jump, problems that he had on earlier jumps. The International
Aeronautic Federation, which oversees aviation records, recognizes only high-altitude freefall jumps.
I wouldn't suggest to any tandem students that they're not free falling. But for the purposes of record keeping it appears that Kittinger's dive from 102,800 isn't/wasn't considered a free fall dive.
For the ultimate adrenaline rush, check out Project MOOSE. A system that was developed in the early 60's that would have enabled a person wearing a space suit to re-enter the atmosphere and land from low Earth orbit.
Yeah. I'm sure she just has no idea about things like oxygen or heat or cold or pressure. I bet she just has no clue.
Gimme a break.
1) pressure suit.
2) Woudl not burn up, or burn at all. This is not someone entering the atmosphere at tens of thousands of mph.
3) no friction until much lower anyway.. the air is so thin the suit won't even flutter.
4) cold: Pressure suit is insulating. Also, thin atmosphere is ALSO insulating. It's the cold at lower elevations that might be dangerous.
Why would she black out, if she's in a pressure suit with an air supply? I don't figure.
There was a show on PBS last week that had footage of the highest freefall ever done (over 100,000 feet). The first time the guy did it, he jumped from about 80,000 feet, and went into a severe spin, eventually passing out. He awoke at about 10,000 feet after his safety chute had opened.
The next time, he went from over 100,000 (they used a balloon to launch him). He actually got stuck in the balloon, and almost couldn't get out. It was amazing stuff.
Apparently, at that height, one of the big problems is hitting the thicker air at about 70,000 feet. By that time, you are moving so fast, that entry into "thicker" air can be quite dangerous (not like any of it is safe).
I wish I remembered the name of the guy who did it (and the show that was on PBS). Anyone else see it?
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
She'll experience *NO* acceleration, she'll be in freefall. She will experience decelleration as the atmosphere thickens (and when she opens here chute).
I don't know much (read *anything*) about skydiving but it said in the article that the big danger was that she would go into an uncontrolled spin because there was no air for her to use to control her fall. I was Wondering if It might be plausible for her to carry down a gyroscope for the first while in order to stabilize herself, and then ditch it (let go of it and have it open up a drag shoot) when she gets down where there is some air for her to control herself with? just an Idea
Look, just because in Star Trek they hurtled toward the sun at warp speed to create a time warp does not mean it's actually possible. In fact at warp speed they would have been going so fast that the added velocity from the suns gravity would have been miniscule at best.
Get your head out of the movies!
Yeah, I saw this in a National Geo article about ballooning. The name of the project was called Excelsior or something and they were testing the possiblity of making a high altitude escape from a failed rocket launch.
The guy, Kittinger, made 3 jumps, I think, with the highest being somewhere around 120k. He broke three records that day: Highest parachute jump. Longest time in freefall. Longest time parachuting.
Kittinger said that when he jumped he couldn't tell he was falling because his clothes weren't flapping (no wind). When he rolled over on his back and saw the balloon rising above him was when he realized he was indeed falling.
Mach speeds without the use of engines!
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
Peter
I'm a newbie with about 100 jumps and just under an hour of freeflail, errr, freefall time (I'm in Oklahoma so we do a lot of hop-n'-pops). I'm just learning how to freefly so I have nothing but enormous respect for what she is attempting to fo. Col. Kittenger's record was never truly recognized by the FAI because of the drogue he used for stability. The drogue was needed because there just isn't enough air at that altitude to work with for stability. That said, it is going to be very interesting to see how she pulls this jump off, drogueless like she plans to do. I imagine her year of training will probably partially involve hanging with the FlyBoyz and Olav to get some needed total body control. :)
What is really going to be interesting is when someone finally gets around to breaking the freefall time record from about 36,000 feet using a Birdman suit to slow their freefall.
Kris
USPA A-34859
Mach 1.5? Everyone knows that to travel in time you need to be going 88 Mph!
Now how is she going to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity?
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Does anyone know how high Gary Powers was when he bailed out of his U2? That must have been a pretty high jump.
Never. Without oxygen, you die, period.
You worry about heat when you are going about ten times faster than this lady will be going.
Remember, orbital vehicles don't simply 'fall'.. they come out of orbit (fast). It's their lateral speed around the planet through atmosphere, not the vertical vector that really causes that red-hot friction.
Glow upon re-entry? She won't be going anywhere near the speeds it would take to cause that. Stop and think, how many jets do you hear of burning up from atmospheric friction when they reach supersonic speeds?
No, it would not be the same if you attempted something similar from a geosynchronous or geostationary orbit. A geostationary or geosynchronous orbit (altitude of either is roughly 35000 km) is still an orbit, just that its velocity is such that it takes the same length of time to orbit as the earth takes to rotate. Using a balloon as the jump platform ensures that the jump point is stationary relative to the atmosphere, and thus the only frictional heating results from downward velocity (which could reach a maximum of the Mach 1.5 range mentioned in the article, but will lessen as the jumper reaches thicker portions of the atmosphere), unlike debris or vehicles entering the atmosphere (whose velocities in the range of 5 km/s or higher).
Actually, tandem skydives are *not* made with drogues unless there is a very good reason for it. From personal experience and that of a number of friends, tandem skydives are done in the exact same way as solo skydives, except that there are two people there.
RR.
-- Geek-Ware - Proud to be Geek!
Oops, correct, speed read
And Concorde is now grounded......
Which means scraping a few thousand pounds (or dollars) together for a flight in a Mig over Russia if you want the supersonic thing (costs a lot but you dio actually get to fly it yourself).
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
back in the 50's the us airforce was experimenting with high altitude bailouts from aircraft. they took a guy up to 90,000ft and he jumped, reaching speeds of mach 1.2, being the only person so far to reach mach 1 without an aircraft.
any one know the the boiling point of water at 160000 feet? less than body temp I imagine... can you imagine your tears boiling off the surface of your eyes? mucous boiling in your lungs? crap just flying out of you and boiling... at body temperature. She could leave a verticle contrail of her body fluids boiled out of her body and frozen into ice crystals in the stratosphere. beats the hell out of smoke cans most skydivers use. she will get a first hand lesson in freeze drying. Low pressure, Low temperature, High speed impact with the ground. Her brittle freeze dried corpse will shatter like glass when it hits the ground.
Snow Crash
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Remember.. mach 1.5 at what altitude? Mach 1.5 is a half mile/second near sea level. at 100,000 feet, mach is WAY slower, so going 'mach' means a lot less.
Thinka bout it.. at lower altitudes, there is now ay you could achieve mach in freefall... way too much air resistance, but as you go higher, mach drops, and air resistance drops, so it gets so easy.
The speed of sound changes with air density - if the air density is zero (as in space) then the speed of sound is zero m/s, the air density is very thin high so the speed of sound will be very low. So if you quote this womans speed in mach numbers as she falls then she will start off at mach 1.5 and then slow down to about mach 0.5 (I seem to remember that people fall at about 200m/s through air close to the ground). In reality the actual speed change will probably be from about 250m/s to 200m/s.
Too many "drags" will make her higher than a kite!
"As I always say, why jack-off when you can jack-in!" - Plughead from "Circuitry Man" (1990)
Ahh, her terminal velocity at impact would only be in the order of 200Mph. Hardly anything really :)
Seriously though, its always good to see someone pushing the envelope.
Prepare to be assimilated. Resistance is futile...
Phear my l33t homepage.
And besides, there will be air eventually... I'd say there's a good chance she'll be going a hefty speed when she hits it.
Woz
Reentry heat is caused by friction against the atmosphere when decelerating from *orbital* velocity (several miles per second). If you just lift an object up above the atmosphere and drop it straight down, it won't be going very fast (Mach 1.5, in her case) and there won't be much heat buildup.
Remember, it's not height that puts you in orbit, it's lateral speeds. Rockets lift above the atmosphere and then turn sideways for the major part of the boost. Haven't you seen those pictures of the shuttle rolling over and disappearing over the horizon?
(It would be entirely possible to land a space vehicle by cancelling your orbital speed above the atmosphere and dropping slowly straight through it. However, as to do this you'd need just as much delta-V as you would on launch, it's easier to use friction instead.)
Isn't that the definition of flying? Throw yourself at the ground and miss.
If you stopped the shuttle, you wouldn't have to drop it straight down. Since it would no longer have the velocity to maintain orbit, it would drop on its own.
Sorry, that's incorrect. Check with Vector or Strong on their tandem systems if you don't believe. The drogue is absolutely vital to making a tandem jump for both stability (hmm, the sidespin phenomenon comes to mind) and to slow down the jumpers to "normal" trerminal speeds of 110-130mph. If they didn't have the drogue and tried to deploy at the speed they would have it would probably do some pretty decent damage to both the skydiving equipment (broken lines, blown cells) or to the jumpers because of the opening shock. The drogue in a tandem jump is necessary and required. Kris Yes, I am a skydiver
they also cut a later reference in the movie to the opening scene.
I know, I was present when Shatner over-dubbed some lines in the movie to remove the reference.
Bennett Innovations, a small A/V production company in Indianapolis, got a late night call from Paramount. They needed a studio to dub over the movie. Shatner came in the next day in a limo, and dubbed over the part of the movie where Kirk and Picard are on horses. When Kirk's horse goes counter-clockwise around picard's horse, the original scene had Kirk mentioning orbital skydiving. Shatner changed this part to mention "Nothing's real. She's not real either (eye-ther)." yadda yadda. You can tell the difference in the recording VERY MUCH if you pay close attention there.
I still have a video tape of the original scene that mentioned skydiving. Is it worth anything to trek collectors????
Anyway, on that same session, Shatner also recorded "Beam them out of there Scotty!!" that shows up early in the movie.
He also recorder a radio spot for European markets. It had something to do with Club Med, but the European market called it something else different. Club Euro??? I forget. Anyway, he recorded it, but it was a joint spot with american express. You know, don't leave the solar system without it, type of commercial.
Shatner was very professional and gracious. I even took a picture of him that made it into the local paper The Indiana(polis?) Business Journal, about the recording session.
I heard that he has a daughter that lives in Carmel, a northern suburban area around Indy.
Hope someone finds this interesting.
Fire Thorn
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translation: she won't float. no kidding.
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If I recall correctly, sonic booms occur behind a vehicle (or in this case, a betty with the biggest balls on the planet), and radiate away from the object in a cone. She probably won't even feel it.
I sincerely hope she survives, and wears a cam. I'd pay 30 bucks for a dvd that has the complete footage of the jump, plus some documentary stuff around it. Hell, it would make a great Imax movie!
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
If Mach 1 = speed of sound at sea level, does it really follow that the MPH speed of Mach 1 changes with altitude? Sure, the speed of sound varies with altitude, but isn't Mach 1 just a reference number for velocity?
I guess not since in 'The right stuff' Yeager produced a sonic boom as he passed M1 in the desert and was obviously not at sea level. So, how does that work? He had a M indicator in his X-1 cockpit that I guess was an airspeed indicator that had to adjust for his altitude in determining where the plane was relative to M1?
But then again, this speed of sound calculator only asks for temperature and humidity, not altitude in determining the speed of sound.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
She would, of course, need a "flux capacitor"!
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
He was flying a U2 spy-plane over the Soviet Union and got shot down. I can't remember off hand how high the U2's flew, but it was supposed to be high enough to avoid getting hit by SAMs. Obviously he wasn't though...
Ok, I'm no skydiver (8 jumps - 5 Army, 3 civilian) but a couple of things strike me.
:).
1) Mach 1.5? Wouldn't that get a little warm? What if she sneezes or something, wouldn't the airspeed tear her arm off or something.
2) Airspeed, heh... there's not much air up there, what if she get's into a spin and can't control it?
3) That's got to get boring after a while. After she loses the sensation of falling I'd think she'd fall asleep
Invent Time Machine and send 7 units back to early January 1986. Have them mailed to NASA.
"...if you're in a vacuum and you break the sound barrier, do you really think you get a shockwave?"
Well, 1) there's no such thing as a true vacuum, which requires a region of space with 0 mass density. Nature abhors a vacuum, meaning that a vacuum, which would also have 0 pressure (all gases obey P \propto \rho^n), would exist only for an instant before matter from the surrounding environment would spread into the vacuum. The best man-made vacuums have only achieved around a nano-atmosphere, well above the near-vacuum of interstellar space.
2) If it's only *almost* a vacuum, there is also a pressure. At that point, the speed of sound c_s = sqrt(\gamma P / \rho). If something breaks the speed of sound in the local medium, then yes. You DO get a shockwave.
Remember that little star in the Large Magellenic Cloud that went boom in 1987... lessee, I think we call that SN1987a. We see the gas that is heated by the shockwaves present in the remnants of that explosion.
And I'm not a slashbot who loves to see myself type... I did my PhD research in this stuff. I'd post under my own account, but I already moderated in this article.
Eric
In "Orbital Decay" by Alan Steele, a character uses a device like that. I haven't any idea whether his description of the process is accurate; the whole idea sounds like a recipie to me...
Sure they could, but who's going to pay for all of the resources it would use up slowing down outside of the atmosphere? The fuel tanks are only so big; which is another factor.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.
Jak Din
"As I always say, why jack-off when you can jack-in!" - Plughead from "Circuitry Man" (1990)
One would think that it would be hard to have controled "flight" in a 2 person presure suit.
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
damn, hope she doesn't hit a bird. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
...that one of the higher of all free-falls was the pilot who got shot down in the U2 over Russia. Apparently he had to free-fall for quite a while before opening his parachute, because he only had 10 minutes of oxygen, and if he deployed his chute right away, the oxygen would have run out before he had fallen to a breathable altitude. I don't know how long he did fall, though.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
static electricity from air friction.
.)
(that may actually be a problem. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Your calculation implies that she would be steadily accelerating along her entire fall to earth, resulting in a velocity at impact of approx. 21,000 miles per hour. In reality, she would reach her top speed of Mach 1.5 in a very short amount of time (a few seconds). If you assume that she spends the majority of her free-fall from 31 miles at about 900 miles per hour (nice round number greater than the speed of sound), then she will fall for about 124 seconds...
the sound of one bitch slapping
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I saw one of those shows on the early space race where they had video footage of a guy testing a pressure suit by floating to a height of over 100,000 feet under a balloon. I was watching the footage (camera above the gondala) thinking "How the hell is he planning to get down" when he just jumped. And certainly free fell for a long, long way. So although it probably wasn't 165000 feet then all that stuff about "First time anything like this has been attempted" is bollocks.
:wq
If she can figure out how to store the energy of her fall (instead of wasting it on heat and kinetic energy transfer) a 31 km high fall should give her 1.21 GW for 1/50th of a second.
POOF
(I'm guessing that a flux capacitor is capable of sapping and storing one's kinetic energy, and the optimal thrust curve naturally leads up to a "terminal velocity" of ~88 mph. At least for a Delorian.)
yes, and I believe the article mentiones that it has been done before, but doesn't give any details (like it was capt Joseph Kittenger, USAF from 102,800') I'm sure the links you found will have all the details for anyone interested.
The difference (other than altitude) is that she's going to try this without a drogue chute to stabilize her. I hope she does well. I'd like to jump with her again. (yes, I'm a skydiver also)
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Thats craziness? Does anyone know if shes gonna burn up on her way down?
Yes, I'm a physics dummy...
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
but is she hot?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
No, it was a USAF test pilot who did the jump. It was in the late 50's for a a test called Project Manhigh. They did lots of tests of maniquens leading up to a few manned dives. The point was to test a new kind of parachute for extremely high-altitude emergencies (accidents on ascent in a spacecraft and their spyplanes).
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Better not. The reversal of such phrases are now covered by the DMCA.
;-)
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Using gravity to speed up space vehicles ("swinging" them around planets) has already been done, no way yuo gonna come up in any speed close to the speed of light - far, far, from it...
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Yes, but a "skydiver" who doesn't turn into a "parachutist" becomes a "crater" instead.
They started spinning so fast that they broke apart. The air is so thin that there's no damping whatsoever.
Ouch! That's just gotta hurt!
OoO
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
However, in the interests of science, I think she should take the risk of shouting it briefly just before reaching Mach 1, so she can be able to hear herself going "oooooooominoreG" shortly after.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Just admit you read it too, you geek!
Don't be ashamed of what we all are....unless you're some fucking TROLL in here trying to upset the community, in which case you are not welcome here at all.
Jak Din
"As I always say, why jack-off when you can jack-in!" - Plughead from "Circuitry Man" (1990)
It's already been done at 102K
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Why jump out of a perfectly good balloon anyway? It's not on fire, it's not going to crash...why get out?
Not to mention the fact that she doesn't have silica tiles like the shuttle, if she starts to glow upon re-entry at mach 1.5, that would be a "Bad Thing"(tm).
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
The article says that it's not a problem like a Space Shuttle experiences, because she's not traveling at orbital speed...
Doh!
Instead of aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh,.... Splut it will be Splut......................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh hhhhhhhhhh.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
on another note, most people never exceede the speed of sound in their lifetime. The lucky few are military pilots and those that can afford and justify a ticket on the concord. This lady gets to do it without a plane.
That leads to my question -- what effect will the (presumed) sonic boom have on her without a plane to shield her from it? Is it dangerous to either her body or her hearing, or will she even notice it? Or will there be no sonic boom at all, with so little atmosphere?
Enquiring minds want to know...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Oxygen is vital for brain function. Luckily, women are better equipped to handle low-oxygen environments.. If she's blonde, she probably won't even need a space suit.
She will not burn up
nuff said
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
Whether she falls from 100,000 feet or 10,000 feet and her chute fails to open she'll hit the earth probably at the same speed (approx. 200 mph, that is, terminal velocity). How long it takes her to slow down from mach 1.5 (speaking of scientific ignorance, I forget if mach is faster or slower at high altitudes) down to terminal velocity, I do not know.
I'm also not sure how she'll survive the transition from the two atmosphere gradiants, she'll drop a considerable amount of speed rather quickly. That must be like hitting the ocean at full freefall, at that speed. My thoughts are that you could easily snap your neck if you enter the lower gradiant at the wrong angle.
I'm not sure whose crazier, her, or that guy who's traveling into space on a home-made rocket (I forget the URL to his site). Well, we all have to go sometime I suppose. Was it Neil Young who sang "better to burn out than to fade away."? I'm not sure.
Pressurized suit: $20,000
Extremely high altitude flight: $15,000
Used parachute: $40
Patches for parachute: $5.37
Becoming the biggest Jackson Pollack painting ever: priceless.
sorry, but there are WAY too many things that could go wrong at that altitude.
if she blacks out, that's it. she may have time to recover, but probably not. Additionally, i would think there would be some concern about the extreme heat generated by the air-friction caused by a fall from that high. I wouldn't assume she would "burn up" like an asteroid, but you never know....
aditionally, you have to worry about the cold. We're talking about sub-hypothermic temperatures at that height. IANAA (austronaut) but i don't think she stands that good of a chance of living through this one.
BTW - the article mentions that she's a parachutist. Skydivers get pretty pissed off when you call them "parachutists"
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
if she suddenly hit a dense atmospere as we have down here, yes, she would be jelly, but now the density of the atmospere will slowly, slowly get more dense and this will cause her to slowly, slowly decrease her speed, so by the time she's down fairly close to the surface, she would have the speed of a normal p-jumper...
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That is absolutely great!!
Thanks for that link. Tears came to my eyes as I was reading it (the intro) and remembering watching that in the theater....."Dammit Jim," I'm gonna go and rent that tonight.
Thanks! You cheered up my shitty-gray-rainy Tokyo day!
:)
Jak Din
"As I always say, why jack-off when you can jack-in!" - Plughead from "Circuitry Man" (1990)
At what point do you need to stop worrying about oxygen, so much as worrying about re-entry friction?
[
That is indeed the coolest thing I have ever heard.
Is there some danger of a human being breaking the sound barrier? Isn't that dangerous?
Its still pretty cool though.
Captain_Frisk
LOL, mod this one up!
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There was a book written a few years ago by Tom Read called 'Freefall' which goes into this subject in some detail. I'll basically give you the synopsis of the interesting technical bits here, so that you can all stop guessing (which is what you are doing).
Firstly, Joe Kittinger had the highest recorded jump, but it is not an official record, as it was not witnessed by an independant judge. Tom Read went out and visited Joe as research for his own jump (there is a weird bit in the book about how Joe drives around Florida in a London black-cab painted white, but anyway).
The plan was for Tom to jump from about 120,000 feet from a gondola. At that height there is virtually no air, and therefore there are lots of problems. Firstly the jump would have to be made in a pressurised suit which is cumbersome, and the only suit suitable from a Russian company restricts joint movement at the elbow, which if you're a sky diver, is a major problem. In addition, because the air is so thin, stability is uncertain. Therefore a drogue parachute is really a must for stability, but this will cause the drop to be slower than without the drogue. This causes problems if you're trying to break Mach 1.
With regards to breaking Mach 1, there are a couple of major issues none of you have taken into account. Firstly, the speed of Mach 1 depends on altitude - at sea level it is a great deal faster than it is even just at 10,000 feet. At 120,000 feet it's less than 690mph. Therefore, if you aren't packing a drogue, then you're going to find it a great deal easier to get through that barrier, but there are still other problems.
There is a region of speed which I think is called the tran-sonic region. This is just before reaching the speed of sound and is when the air pressure in front of the object is building up. People don't notice this effect on Concorde because of the acceleration making it such a short period. When you get to Mach 1, the buffeting suddenly stops, and you can accelerate much easier.
People have stated that there is no air at this altitude, and that's just pure crap - there is air, just not a lot. There is a risk that one part of the body will reach Mach before another and that may cause problems. In theory, there is a chance that trying to do this will cause your head to be pushed back into your neck - this would of course be fatal.
Tom Read unfortunately had a mental breakdown (which is what a large part of his book covers), which isn't suprising considering some of the jobs he did whilst a Para and in the SAS, and trying to plan for doing this sort of jump. I would reccomend however trying to grab a copy of his book if you're interested in this subject, as those sections that do cover the plans for the jump, although brief, make quite interesting reading.
All I can say, is that it would require a highly experienced sky diver, preferably with military background and over a 1,000 jumps at minimum to try this one. Personally, I've always thought that the ultimate would be Angel Falls as a basejump, which I know goes on quite regulraly. Looks fantastic.
Hey! You were wrong, the cat dies too. (And boy is my wife PISSED at me now!)
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
The mach number is basically the dimensionless (no units) ratio of the objects velocity divided by the speed of sound in the fluid that object is travelling in (air is considered a fluid).
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
80,000 or so. Doesn't necessarily mean he bailed out that high.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
aren't making a silly distinction.
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And by the way she does not need to bother screaming, because at this speed she will be down much sooner than they will even hear her scream :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
In college I setup a system to spray water at 9.8 meters per second by hooking a methane tube to the sink... does that count?
yeah, sure, "thank you god." what about the engineer who designed the automatic parachute release or the people that built it?
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Kind of like crossing a roundabout from a point on the outside to a point opposite on the inside, you would appear to be moving in a straight line between the 2 points, but actually going diagonally against the rotation.
Then again the math would be hell, and I'm sure if it was possible they'd have already tried bringing spacecraft in that way as there must be advantages to doing it at mach 1.5 rather than mach 15 (or 30 whichever of the above was right)
~ppppppppö
Reminds me of the opening of Generations (the book anyway; I think they cut that scene from the movie), where Kirk skydives from orbit..
There is also a website for Cheryl Stearns jump at Stratoquest.com. Aparently the jump was going to be filmed for a TV series called "Global Fitness Challenge". (However, that mentions an April 2000 date?) The common theme of the show seems to be pitting an American athlete or team against a foreign competitor.
RE: Gary Powers
Though the U2 was capable of flying at 80,000' and routinely flew at 70,000, Powers plane had already dropped to 34,000 feet when he climbed out. (read Mayday for the U2 for a detailed retelling of Powers flight).
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It isn't actually outside the atmosphere, there is just very little air. You use huge balloons - have a look at Lindstrand Balloons, they do lots of pioneering stuff like the ballooning equivalent of satelites and heavy lift airships. Actually, there is a very good chance that they will make this balloon. Either them or Cameron Balloons.
A human scud missile? ;-) complete and utter insanity.
I lost me sig.
actually sometime back in '97 several very experienced skydivers decided to do a very high altitude jump over antartica.....
however bravado got in the way and none of them used automatic releases for thier chutes (where an altimiter trigers the release) or carried altimiters
due to the overcast conditions and well the simple lack of contrast between sky and ground out there in iceville.....several of them died when they tunneled straight into the snow without even having deployed thier chutes.....they simply had no idea the ground was even comming and eneded up 30 feet deep.
bk
...that the government will allow someone to jump off cliffs, from airplanes, from hot air balloons at ridiculously dangerous heights, but they won't allow someone to smoke a plant for enjoyment.
Not that I think what she's doing is wrong. Whatever you want to do is your business.
Society is completely fucked up.
hmm what about at the poles?
~ppppppppö
This would be an amazin accomplishment, but it should be noted that this would not be the first dive from an altitude high enough to require a pressure suit. Forty years ago Joseph Kittinger made a succesfull jump from 103,000'. A quick google search turned up some sites with info on him and his jump. Check some of them out:
Here
and
Hereand
HereDan
Speed of sound is purely temperature dependent. Air pressure is incidental. At sea level the speed of sound is ~760 mph and at 100,000 ft it is ~675.
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
Sure. Remember that great big orange fuel tank and those solid rocket boosters on the sides? You'll need one of those up there to bring the shuttle back to a speed of zero WRT the earth. Newton sucks, eh?
Aerobraking is the best way to slow yourself from orbital velocities...assuming there is an atmosphere where you are headed...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Actually, the speed of sound goes UP as the air pressure goes down. At sea level, Mach 1 is roughly 700 miles/hour, while at 100,000 feet where the Habu fly it's about 1000 miles/hour.
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ummm...mach 1.5 isn't sustained. See, friction opposes motion. In fact, as the article indicates, by the time she gets to "normal" altitudes, she will actually be going slower than "normal".
People keep talking about the heat buildup at Mach 1.5. You forget the Sonic Wind series of experiments: Strap a fool to a rocket-powered sled on rails and light the fuse. Fool and sled exceed Mach 1. Fool and sled hit pool of water and slow down at 20 g's plus.
They have video of this up at the Cosmosphere, but unfortunatly not online. You can actually see the shockwaves from the leading edge of the fool!
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Why can't you come straight down from a geo-synchronous orbit? The radius of your orbit is reduced as you come down, but I would think that you can compensate for that by slowing down...but maybe that's too hard and would take too much fuel. How far out is a geo-synchronous orbit anyway?
Pressurized suit: $20,000
Extremely high altitude flight: $15,000
Used parachute: $40
Patches for parachute: $5.37
Being the first person to achievesubterranean supersonic travel: priceless.
--------
I guess i'm not funny. It must be my 47th chromozone.
I think you mean subspatial supersonic travel? Either way it's still wrong, cause everyone knows that Chuch Yeager holds that record. Maybe you mean nonvehicular supersonic travel? I think that's already done before. I think she just wants to set a record for the highest jump ever.
Or maybe she's planning to jump into a cave?
Of course, she'll be a giant frost-bitten icicle by the time she smacks into the earth and shatters, but it would still be cool.
---
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Nope. Mach number is your velocity divided by the local speed of sound. Altitude and temperature do absolutely change the speed of sound a lot, and therefore a given velocity is NOT associated with the same Mach number at all altitudes.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Geostationary is about five earth radii out, if I remember correctly. You would in fact need just about all the fuel it took to get you into orbit to stop in space.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Geosynchronous orbit is 23,300 miles above sea level. It is also at a speed of something above mach 26 (or something). The space shuttle doesn't even go that high. It requires a lot of fuel to get there. When it launches satellites into orbit, it stops in a much lower orbit and the satellite uses a modified version of an ICBM to go the rest of the distance.
Here again, slowing down from M26+ to 0 requires a vecter pretty shallow relitive to the earth... overheating becomes a major issue... yada, yada, yada...
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I think what you are trying to say is that speed of sound decreases with decreasing density of the medium. THAT is true. While in college, we set up a system (in a very near vacuum) where we had a liquid flowing faster than the speed of sound (it wasn't all that impressive, but it is fun to say I've poured something that fast).
Mach number is defined as the ratio between velocity and the speed of sound. All you need to know to find speed of sound is the static temperature of the air.
Airspeed is measured by comparing the dynamic pressure of the air to the static pressure of the air, using the isentropic relations. Of course you'll have to correct for the normal shock pressure lossses when you start getting into the supersonic flight regime.
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
- looking at the picture of her in the specialized jump suit, skin shows. Now if your so high up, that there's not enough air to control descent, then isn't there any danger of bends sickness if the whole body isn't in a preassurized suit?
- one not only needs a preassurized suit. I would imagine you also need a suit that protects one from cosmic radiation...?
- what about becoming extremely electro statically charged by falling at those speeds and "ripping" the atmosphere which is busy absorbing radiation..?
- it is extremely cold up there, somewhere around -90 celcius, add to that the draft chill factor of mach 1.5
...
- one poster mentioned the danger of airplanes wings being ripped of at such high speeds. That danger doesn't apply here since in the case of the airplane the accelerating force is being applied to the "trunk" of the airplane from behind, thus straining attached parts not in front of the engine. In the womens case, the accelerating force is gravition, which is being applied to her whole body. But what about resonance effects? Assuming she can avoid going into extreme tumbling wouldn't there be a problem of "whipping" body parts (her head for example)
..?
The extreme tumbling could lead to vomitting into her helmet and suffocating?
- basically what happens is her potential energy of 31miles gets converted into other forms of energy: thermal and kinetic. No need to worry about the thermal energy part. So, the kinetic energy would be preferrably "down". But she also has three axes of rotation. Entropy usually is quite eager to take advantage of all dimensions of freedom. Ok, so she uses some kind of drag-chute. That still leaves on dimension of rotational freedom left: spinning along the axis of head to feet.
(Which brings back the possibility of vomitting into her helmet again.)
tom in hdThe current highest jump and also the fastest speed set by a human was set by an air force jumper in the fifties or sixties. He went up basically into space in a helium balloon, jumped, and came all the way down. I think he broke his leg somewhere in the process and several times he got into flat spins that nearly blacked him out or killed him because without air he couldn't control his descent.
The whole thing was done to see if someone would have a chance to survive a bailout from a space capsule at extreme altitude. His record still stands because no one, not even him, has been stupid enough to try again yet.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
~ppppppppö
The tricky bit is if you have parts of your airplane sticking out through the shock wave. That's why most supersonic aircraft have distinctive wedge-shaped planforms. If you stay out of the way of the shockwave (which forms in a cone around the nose of your aircraft) you're all good.
As an aside, the reason the space shuttle's (and most ICBM's) nosecone is blunt is to detach the shock wave from the front of the airframe. This vastly increases the pressure drag on the airframe, and also drastically decreases the thermal heating of the aircraft. That's why the shuttle doesn't burn up, but the X-15 had significant heat damage after its very high speed (Mach 7-8 if I remember correctly) test flights.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If the friction gets to the point where she starts to glow on the way down, will she then officially be know as a "Hot Chick"?
-- DMSmith
C:\ is the root of all evil
the sonic boom is created from a bow-wave of constructive interference. She would be inside of this wave, and so shouldn't have noise problems from the boom. Noise problems from the rush of air is a different story.
Capt Joe Kittinger did it Aug 29 1960 from ,102,000 feet. Back with 1960 era parachuting gear.
Gee a static line jump from 5,000 feet with a malfunction will kill you just as easily as one from 150,000 feet.
Since I am probably the only slashdotting skydiver I must let everyone know that she will not meet the Earth at Mach 1.5 but rather at 120 mph after she slows down in the atmosphere. (assuming she does not have an automatic deployment device like most regualr skydivers in case of a no-pull situation).
Cheryl Stearns is pretty famous for jumping accuracy I'm sure she can do this. I don't think it is a big deal at all. It is just an excercize in logisitics and a money. If you jump from 30k you need oxygen...bah... If she has a pressure suit, and a main/reserve container that can handle the cold temperatures at the altitude, a drogue chute to stabilize her in freefall wearing that presure suit, and she pulls anywhere between 30,000-5,000 feet (I pull at 2,500-3,000 right over the airport)she will make it to a safe landing area.
just my two cents
mpeg 4 ever
anonymous Ramon
I loved that ride! Nothing like staring up at a little round movie screen while your butt is pinched as the rocket "blasts off!"
I don't remember the part you're talking about though.
But don't you 'Slam' into that air if your traveling at mach 1+?
TK
Several Million, B.C: great lizards known as "Dino-saurs" were rendered extinct by the impact of a meteorite off the Yucatan.
2000: Parachutist Cheryl Stearns achieves the first sub-orbital skydive, with mixed results. When she reached Mach 1.5, Cheryl vanished, never to be seen again.
2020: It has been determined that Cheryl Stearns, upon breaking mach 1.5, travelled through time, and smashed into the Yucatan. The resulting clouds and debris led to the extinction of all dinosaurs.
"...there's a reserve chute?"
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
BTW - the article mentions that she's a parachutist. Skydivers get pretty pissed off when you call them "parachutists"
Umm, we do?
Where do I sign up?
*grin*
... is rather unlikely, no matter what kind of suit you're wearing.
You might as well sport your best sunday suit; your relatives won't have to change you for your funeral.
And if you're lucky, you'll get cremated once you *do* hit that mach 1.5.
I have always wondered, I haven ever taken a phsyics class other than HS, but do you hear the sonic boom as you descend?? I know it is not just "one boom" but a constant effect, so since your traveling faster you dont hear it right?
Jeremy
A man jumps off the top of the Empire State Building. As he passes the 18th floor someone leans out the window and asks him:
"How's it going?"
To which the faller replies:
"So far, so good."
what exactly is Mach 1 at that altitude? and is she travling Mach 1 or 750+ Mph?
the speed of sound waves changes with the density of the medium. How fast is it/her at that height?
Not quite -- due to decreasing air temperature, the speed of sound actually decreases as you go up for a while, then increases again until you hit near-vacuum.
- Sea level -- 1116 fps
- 36000 to 82000 feet -- 968 fps
- 150000 feet -- 1075 fps
- 250000 feet and up -- by a quirk of physics, 1116 fps again!
NASA has a nice web tutorial on this topic. Greg Roth has a more precise javascript calculator.Wow, that's fast... I was under the impression that breaking the sound barrier was rather stressful for whatever does it, since the sound waves it creates can't get out of its way before it plows into them. I guess a lone parachuter may not be making much sound, especially until she hits the atmosphere, but once she does reach air it seems to me that the amount of drag on her body would amplify greatly due to the high speeds and the effect of the sound barrier. If the sound barrier can tear the wings off of airplanes, I wonder how she plans to prevent, say, her head from being torn from her neck?
Of course, I Am Not A Physicist, so please don't flame me if I sound stupid. =-)
Didnt the US military try this out in the 1950' the jump height was classified. I remember seeing something about this on the Discovery channel.
*ahem*. PRESSURE SUIT = INSULATION.
Also, temperature at altitude will be around
-70, but in very thin air... so heat won't conduct away that fast.
And remember, at the altitude she'll be breaking mach at, the air will be so thin it won't be noticable (or barely). There will be no 'shock wave' to push through (at least, none that poses a problem). Breaking mach at lower altitudes won't happen easily.... not enough force to overcome resistance( terminal velocity drops with density)
have you considered that the speed of sound has nolthing to do with air density and everything to do with temperature?
The speed of sound in the thin, but warmer air very high up is similar to that on ground.
The speed of sound in COLD air is slower, and in WARM air is higher.
Not big at all. Byt the time she reaches ground, she'll be going SLOWER than the average skydiver, due to increased bulkiness of pressure suit.
OK, hold on tight, I'm going to explain the joke to you.
The poster was imagining that she would be travelling supersonically through the soil on impact. You know, kinda like Neo in the jump sequence in The Matrix, or like Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff. The poster wasn't saying that this would actually happen, just that it's a funny image to contemplate.
See?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Head down is much faster. My normal belly down (Relative work) speed is around 112 MPH (I have a protrack which records my speed). My head down speed is 168MPH so far, I'm still working on head down stability.
A belly down jump from 13.5k feet, dumping at 3k is a little over a minute of free fall.
At the super high altitude with less air resistance you fall MUCH faster and the speed of sound is slower. She will probably fall with a drogue chute attached to slow her down a bit. Getting a pre-mature deployment at higher than normal speeds will kill her.
Yes, I am a licensed skydiver (USPA #153704, A-34316). I have 100 jumps, working on my C license now :)
-Shishak
"Now, I hope and pray that I will, but, today I am still just a bill"
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
Nobody has yet mentioned that there was an episode of Star Trek Voyager where B'Elanna did this (on the holodeck). I always thought that was a good idea.
Altitude, altitude, altitude.
She will not be breaking mach or anywhere NEAR mach at 10,000 feet. As the article said (and you quoted), at those altitudes, she will be basically like any other skydiver, though a bit slower due to bulk of pressure suit.
At high altitudes (100,000 feet or so), she WILL break mach, but the air is so thin.. well.. tha'ts why she can do it! The X-1 didn't go that high.
i thought hippies started that program in the 60's...
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Yeah.. cause the plane was forced through very high speeds at low altitude. At extreme altitudes (100,000 feet is WAY over any commercial jet, even Concorde, or even supersonic fighters, or bombers, etc...), there is basically very little air resistance.
Keep in mind, it takes energy to produce heat; if she was encountering enough friction to burn up in freefall, she would SLOW DOWN, not burn up. She would slow unless something was forcing her faster.....
The reason orbital objects burn up is due to horizontal velocity.
How fast is Mach 1.5 if there is no air up there to transmit sound?
I think there must be a little bit of air at 31 miles up. Satellites can't maintain orbit below about 500 miles because of atmospheric drag.
--
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Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Seems like there's not much left to do after something like this. I suppose some nuts will try to set a new record by having sex while they jump from 31 mi. up.
Yes, but then what will they do for the other 63 seconds?
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
At 31 miles up, you can definitely see the curvature of the earth. According to my quick napkin calculations, she should hav a horizon of approximate 600 miles in every direction. Meaning that a curvature of approximately 15 degress can be seen.
www.enthea.org
All right, for those of you saying cats break legs or die after falling 100 ft:
A healthy cat falling from a distance of a few floors up or more (not hitting anything on the way down) should be able to land on its legs and survive uninjured.
If the cat falls only a few feet, injury is highly likely due to landing in practically any position.
If the cat falls a considerable distance (more than a few floors up), the cat has time to orient itself and use its tail for balance. Although there is an initial shock during the accelaration and realization of free-fall, once the cat hits terminal velocity, the cat relaxes and can sustain faster impacts. (Anybody see the video from about a year ago where a fireman on an extended ladder went to grab a cat from the top of a wooden pole, and the cat jumped off? The videocamera recorded several seconds of a flat-looking, flying cat, which landed safely and ran away.)
Obviously, there's some limit to this. If you release the cat from above the atmosphere, the liquid in the body would boil off, and the remnants wouldn't make it to the ground in one piece.
(P.S. Please don't try dropping cats at home.)
NASA is prototyping a parachute-slowed vehicle to handle emergency exit from the Space Station.
Not as cool as jumping with no vehicle, but it will work a lot higher and start with a lot more horizontal velocity.
We're all under the illusion that there is a such thing as perpetual freefall.
There is; that's what being in orbit is.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Well... this saturday I crossed atlantic in plane... 30000 feet only and -57C (some where around -70F) well... talk about temperature... I suppose that in these 165000 feet it will be even a bit lower ... under -100C ... She is going to spend over 15 minutes at these extreme temperatures... it should burn all uncovered skin for sure.. and I would bet she will blackout in the warmout. Because subjectively the change will be like if you would jump in +70C hot water... basicly no way!
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Oh come on... she might be good but a girlie can't do it first... or something.... just kidding really. I respect it. I'm scared of heights and couldn't imagine skydiving from the top of my apartment.
Not sure if there's anything to hit at sub-orbital heights (chunks of ice, etc.), but what a horrible mess it would make at mach 1/1.5!
Wow, that's fast... I was under the impression that breaking the sound barrier was rather stressful for whatever does it, since the sound waves it creates can't get out of its way before it plows into them. I guess a lone parachuter may not be making much sound, especially until she hits the atmosphere, but once she does reach air it seems to me that the amount of drag on her body would amplify greatly due to the high speeds and the effect of the sound barrier.
The speed Mach 1.5 is a little misleading - in the air she'll be travelling through, she won't be breaking the speed of sound, although she may reach around 1000 miles/hour. In thin air, the speed of sound is much higher than at sea level. She will actually decelerate as she falls into the thicker lower atmosphere, so at no time will she be going fast than the speed of sound in the air she is travelling through. The main danger as far as I can see is difficulty in preventing a spin in a thin atmosphere - there is little air resistance to allow you to stop rotation motion. Still, for an experienced sky diver, this shouldn't be an insurmountable problem.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
She will have no control so why is she training? Maybe to have more time before she craters. Will her frag count go down if she does? Taking bets on how big the hole will be.
R2, are you sure this thing is safe?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yeah, IIRC the shuttle does its re-entry at close to Mach 30. And the atmosphere has no clear-cut border, it's a gradual thing. In fact, 31 miles up, you actually do have a bit of atmosphere. So the increasingly dense atmosphere should slow her down gradually.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Fact:
The speed of sound at 50000 ft is higher than at sea level and even higher at 165000ft.
The Concord flies at Mach 2
A 747 flies 850 - 1000 km/h (that's 5-600 MPH)
Logic 101:
BA and Air France is paying lots of money for the Concorde to fly at 1000 km/h at 50000 ft transporting 100 people when they could transport 350 people in a 747 at 35000ft at 1000 km/h for less money?? I don't think so.
Physics 101:
Travel NYC - London in a 747 at 35000 ft takes 6 - 7 hours.
You are suggesting that at 50000 ft 640MPH is about Mach2. That raises the question, how can the Concorde do NYC - London in about half the time travelling a longer distance at the same or just slightly higher speed than the 747.
(The distance is a little bit longer due to the longer curve at 50000 ft)
Remember that any orbiting body is always falling towards Earth; the reason it doesn't crash into the ground is that it's moving so fast at a tangent to the Earth that it "misses" the ground itself.
a) The percentage of women in the sport is not nearly what it is in the general population -- perhaps 15% or so, and that's the best it's been in the quarter-century I've been skydiving.
b) The above statistic (which is just ballpark, BTW -- it was around 11% the last firm stats I saw, and it seems to have gone up since then). I think there's nothing inherently gender-biased there, just the history of the sport: it began with a bunch of ex-military paratroopers, back when there weren't any women in that group. It's been trying to catch up to the population ever since.
All that said, my comment wasn't intended to bash women -- it was intended to bash the previous poster, who characterized a great skydiver and very decent person as "rich" and "insane." I didn't say men "owned skydiving" -- I said Cheryl Stearns would own the poster, were they to compete...
And back when it was looked down upon, I often jumped with the few women there were... it was a welcome relief from the testosterone-soaked young men who were in the majority (one of whom was I, no doubt). And the DZ where I spent my student time had more women, percentage-wise, than most do now -- hell, half of my jumpmasters were women -- so they had a good influence on me.
Forgive me? :)
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
My dad was a jet mechanic in the navy. He has told me a story about some of the early supersonic tests. He's seen where a plane has gone up, passed the barrier and come down with all it's paint BURNT OFF.
I'd think it's a least possible the same thing could happen to this attempt.
Go Purdue!
If I remember Phys III correctly, the boom is because as you approach the speed of sound, the sound wave stack on top of each other, creating a VERY high pressure zone (all the pressurizations and rarifications of the waves start adding up), basically a standing wave directly in front of you that keeps amplifying itself. After to pass the speed of sound, you pass by the wave, and it propagates like a normal (although massive) sound wave. Creating a sonic boom when that wave passes by. Once you go supersonic, things act different, and I won't try to dreg that up from memory. But I do think that as she slows back down, she's going to get a hell of a kick in the ass when that wave catches back up with her.
I haven't jumped in years, but navigation is not difficult as long as you don't have clouds down below. Certainly she'll review satellite photos of the area around the launch site, at various scales, and she'll probably carry a GPS receiver for use on ascent and while under canopy.
.7, so from about 50,000 feet down she could cover more than four miles sideways.
.sig below...
I suspect that Cheryl and her team will select many potential landing zones about a mile or two apart, and during the ascent will narrow the choices down to one or two. Her location at exit will be known to within a few meters, so if she maintains zero lift during freefall her trajectory should be very predictable. Just a little bit of tracking after slowing subsonic will let her shift her landing point miles- the L/D is about
Her chase crew should be able to get to the chosen LZ before she jumps. Since ram air chutes have L/D about 3, if she deploys at 10,000 feet she could fly four more miles to a pinpoint landing- the chase crew can put out a target, put up a windsock, and she'll land within a meter of her mark for the cameras.
Extreme altitude skydiving is a stretch, but is certainly doable with reasonable safety.
Please disregard my
As for cratering, sorry to disappoint your ghoulish fascination, but it wouldn't be spectacular. You sound like one of the mouth breathers that attends NASCAR races to see the crashes. Anyway, I'm sure she'll have an automatic activation device on her reserve chute, as is pretty standard practice these days.
I think Cheryl should drop a coin from the balloon, just to see how far it goes into the ground =). This could help scientists figure out other things, like how far she would go into the ground if she happened to forget to pull the chute......
As a side note, before they actually flew that brave volunteer, the Air Force--I dunno if NASA was around then--pitched dummies in pressure suits out the balloons. Some people speculate that witnesses finding the dummies on the ground led to a lot of the alien crash stories. I think they were doing this from the late forties to the early fifties. The project was called "Man High" and there's a History Channel documentary on it. Way cool footage on that show. There's also a web page somewhere. Try searching for "Man High" on google. You'll have to wade through lots of gay porn hits to get to it, but thats the nature of search engines.
You think that's wacky? In the early 60's, there were a number of designs for a single-person bailout device, for "bailing out" from *orbit*. MOOSE was one such design, where the astronaut was enclosed in a foam shield.
:)
Mach 1.5, bah! Try Mach *25*!
Why does it matter if she is single or married?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Am i the only person who thinks this would be way cool and would do it if it i got the chance (and we find out it can be done without being killed!)
:)
I think it would be SO MUCH FUN! True, i've never even been skydiving at all and i'd have to work up to it... but damn that's fast.. and no speeding tickets or plane or anything- just "flying" at mach 1.5!
cool.....
I'm not sure whose crazier, her, or that guy who's traveling into space on a home-made rocket (I forget the URL to his site).
Does anyone know that URL, I'd like to check that out.
what you use the courage for is up for personal interpretation
-Bex
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan
Good luck Cheryl!
PS: I've made my 1000 jump this year and I would die for doing such a looonnngg jump!
The sight must be incredible!
This is a good example of where it pays to read the linked article. In this case the article mentions that burnup on re-entry is caused by the speeds necessary for orbit. With entry of asteroids it is the speed that got them to earth that is the problem. Since she will be starting at a stable speed relative to the earth, and her only speed will be that due to gravity, she won't have any real friction/heat problems.
Hurts my eyes. Don't you just hate these pages?
The good thing about having insanely rich folk around is that sometimes they really aren't that bright, and provide us slaves with high-quality entertainment on how to thin the herd (evolution in action).
Methinks I smell a candidate for the Darwin Awards if things go south for winter...
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Sane thing to do, would be to test it out on those crash dummy thingies first.
Monitor temp, forces etc... You don't want to get your hands ripped off by the winds...
Engineering for Humanity.
Smoke a cigarette?
yeah. as another fellow skydiver it takes 2.5 minutes to get down from 3500 feet. most of that is chute time and not skydiving though. its long enough so that skydiving can get *really* boring after the first 10 or so odd jumps. terminal velocity prevents you from falling faster than 200 something mph so you do have time to look around while falling...and get bored. its not as exciting as it seems but its more fun than driving a car to work everyday. :)
The longest delayed skydive was made by Capt. Joseph W. Kittinger, who dropped 25,820 m. (84,700 ft.) from a balloon at Tularosa, New Mexico, USA, on August 16, 1960. He fell for 4 min. 37 sec. before his parachute was deployed automatically. In Kittinger Park in Orlando Florida the sign says that PLUS that he hit mach 1 BREIFLY while falling. IF this woman plans to jump from TWICE as far up.. shouldnt that mean a 8 min freefall? That I would love to do.
It also depends on whether it's Mach 1.5 IAS or TAS... with almost no atmosphere, sound is relatively slower than down here, by a factor of about... yeah, a lot.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Subject says it all.
She is going to be wearing a device that will
automatically deploy the parachute once she
is below a preset altitude.
As I understand it, you don't hear the boom because the sound is actually behind you and travelling "away" from you. This may not be entirely accurate, though, as we all know that sound doesn't travel in only one direction from a source.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Density is generally a function of air temperature. (pressure = density times temperature times a gas constant).
what dasunt said was correct, but incomplete. The speed of sound is, by definition, the speed at which pressure waves expand isentropically from a disturbance source. They will expand faster in a denser medium, but only because in similar, physically unconstrained gaseous mediums, density is a function of temp.
You have to be careful about the way you think about this because two gases with identical densities but different temperatures will have different speeds of sound. At similar temperatures but different densities, they will have identical speeds of sound.
When you move from gases to solid mediums, other physical phenomena come into play.
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
Damn right! I wanna try this, if she survives.....but WITH the combat drop-pod. My thoughts: She's fucked.
In Soviet Russia, Beowulf cluster imagines YOU!
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I mis-phrased that last post (i hope it gets posted before this one anyway.) You don't hear the boom because you are already traveling faster than the sound and therefore you are steadily increasing the distance between you and the source of the boom (the location where you broke the barrier)and you are essentially moving away from the sound at a faster speed than the sound is traveling.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
If you know the temperature of the air she's falling through at that height, you can figure out the temperature on her suit by figuring out the temperature jump across the shock that will form in front of her, and then the temperature increase of the air as it exchanges kinetic energy for internal energy (as it slows down, coming to rest against her suit, it gets compressed and gets hotter).
Both of these things only depend on the Mach number and the properties of air, so you can calculate them very easily. The temperature on her suit will be about 21 degrees F. Not exactly "burning" temperature.
There are additional mechanisms for heat generation due to friction, but they won't make her suit get much hotter than 21 degrees F.
Does that make more sense?
Even so, they might set a vehicleless-human airspeed record too!
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Re-entry friction is less of a problem if you drop straight down. Something in orbit has a very large horizontal velocity (too lazy to work out the numbers, but roughly the circumference of the earth in 90 minutes), and much of the heat of re-entry is caused by this horizontal velocity.
According to the article she'll only get up to Mach 1.5 [doesn't say if that's relative to the speed of sound at sea level, or to the actual speed of sound in the air she's passing through], and that's quite a bit less then orbital velocity.
And she's no where near the altitude of even low-earth orbit satellites like Mir and ISS. They are 200+ miles up, well above her 31 mile altitude.
Yeah! SST sub-orbital combat drops!
(8-DCS)
While the dialogue and acting were dreadful and elementary science was so obviously ignored that it was painful to watch, the movie did have some nice touches.
:-)
In particular, the Martian landscapes were done very prettily and not horribly wrong, and the effects overall were quite reasonable apart from a few embarrassing moments during the sand tornado and during alleged "weightlessness".
If you survived cringing throughout the dreadful dialogues and didn't care much about storylines or basic physics then it was watchable. Almost.
I hear that a lot of the problems were due to a change of director or producer or something part-way through. The politics probably pissed off all the actors and other staff, and the end result was amateurish without the benefits of B-movie chuckle value.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
RE: Your ignorance is showing.
Of course it is. That's why I'm asking.
RE: As for cratering, sorry to disappoint your ghoulish fascination, but it wouldn't be spectacular. You sound like one of the mouth breathers that attends NASCAR
Nope, sorry, that's not me. But I am trying to imagine the hellacious risks this woman is taking. It's not as if if her parachute malfunctions they can rush her to hospital with some chance of survival.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
The guy with the homemade rocket is at www.rocketguy.com.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
never hurts to give a call to old Dr. Jack Daniels
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan
It's called flying united that why us skydivers don't like to date non-skydivers . Seriously though it has already been done from average altitudes like 13,000 ft.
Actually, following a link from a poster up above to here, they say he landed 14 minutes later. Holy shit. Can that be right?
Jason
The full rules says that pilots have to use 02 when over 12,500 for more than 30 min or over 14,000 ft at all. It would probably be smart to use it from about 8,000 to 10,000 ft up.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I'm no skydiver. I'd like too but I'd also like to be president too. so i don't know about this and no one has addressed it yet how does she know where she is? i mean certainly there is some part of the planet where she would prefer to land. a field versus a forest or lake. when she falling and reaches a strata of air more conducive to steering how will she kow which direction to stear? GPS is all i can think of othere than dead reckoning but GPS would need time to get a fix on her and moving that fast I don't think that likely. so whats the deal skydivers. i mean at 31 miles can you see where you're headed?
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I'd be happy to judge a claim on www.ideosphere.com for this event if anyone cares to create the claim
They interviewed her on NPR. She only has a handful of jumps under her belt and her highest jump was from less than 1/3 the height of this one. It will be interesting to see if she survives it.
"Mmmmmm, beer." Homer Simpson
First, the claim that the current record jump (made on 16 August 1960 by then U.S. Air Force Major Joseph Kittinger) did not include a free fall is not correct---Kittinger fell free for 16 seconds. At that point a small drogue chute deployed to keep him from tumbling as he re-entered the atmosphere. He continued to accelerate, however, until 90,000 ft (30 seconds into the descent) when he hit his maximum velocity of 614 mph, very close to the speed of sound at that altitude.
The second error is the comment about having a terminal velocity. I first read about Kittinger's jump in an article in the American Journal of Physics (October 1996), and the whole point of the article is that a body falling vertically from outside the atmosphere never achieves a terminal velocity.
Before Kittinger made his jump, the program (Project Excelsior) dropped a number of instrumented dummies, so I suspect that the use of a drogue chute is necessary to prevent tumbling. But then the difference between thrill seekers and test pilots is that the former "just does it".
Anonymous Me
(not logged in because I'm supposed to be working...)
To quote the article:
The last time anything like this jump was attempted was in the 1950s, says skydiving coach Gene Chacker of the Raeford Parachute Center in Raeford, N.C. But that from just over 100,000 feet and without free falling, he says.
I think the "without free falling" portion of that previous jump is what makes this one unique.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
Reminds me of the lady who wanted to show the world how great (and safe) it is to parachute off of Yosemite (half dome i think). Too bad her family watched her death--and filmed it. I guess it comes down to whatever floats your boat.
There is no atmosphere up there
Actually, most scientists agree that "space" starts at 50 miles above the earth. Although it is very thin, there is still some helium/hydrogen and other trace gases up there.
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
Maybe she could even have a live question/answer session while she is hurtling towards Earth. "Um, are you worried about your chute not opening?" They might screen that one out though...
Maybe an IMAX movie would also be a good idea, I want to do lots of dangerous and exciting things in my life from the comfort of a nice soft chair and eating some popcorn.
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No sig
Don't go so low to describe yourself like that.
I dare you say that again.
>All you need to know to find speed of sound is the static temperature of the air.
So you are saying that speed of sound is not influenced by altitude? Of course, as altitude increases, temperature would tend to decrease... but the posters above said something about the density of air at different altitudes having an affect on the speed at which sound waves travel at a given altitude.
I guess the question is this: If the concorde travels at speeds greater than Mach 2 and the SR-71 > Mach 4, is the SR-71 actually more than twice as fast as the concorde because it operates at much higher altitudes?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Sure, falling 32 miles is fun and achieving mach 1.5 is pretty damn incredible, but all i wanna know is how big a hole in the ground she'll make if the parachute doesn't open.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
She could take over a failing Dotcom and experience a greater thrill trying to smoothen the fall in listings. I am quite sure it would require greater skill and therefore keep her very far from boredom.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
How, exactly, does one get a balloon to float outside of the Earth's atmosphere?
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If one of the naysayers is right, I wonder how we'll ever know what happened to her. What if she blacks out? Is fried to a crisp? Gets her body broken in several places? All we'll have is...well, maybe a crater.
Re-entry friction is less of a problem if you drop straight down. Something in orbit has a very large horizontal velocity (too lazy to work out the numbers, but roughly the circumference of the earth in 90 minutes), and much of the heat of re-entry is caused by this horizontal velocity.
Orbital velocity is about 8 km/second (5 miles/second).
Energy shed into the atmosphere is roughly proprortional to the cube of the velocity, so something travelling at Mach 1.5 (about 0.5 km/second) sheds about 4000 times less energy per unit time (and generates 4000 times less heat).
Summary: Quite a bit slower, and *much* less heat generation.
Yea but is it running Linux? I don't think i'd trust a windows OS at that altitute?
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
1)Wouldn't slowing her down from Mach 1.5 to 0 with the use of a parachute tear this woman in half?
Something like zoom zoom zoom zoom ripcord *flap* *SPLUTCH*
2) If she blacks out, how deep a crater is she going to leave in the Earth when she hits it? I think she should be parachuted out over a graveyard so that if she messes something up, at least noone'll have to incur the cost of burying her, just slap a tombstone over the 100' wormhole her corpse'll make slamming into the ground.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
what you use the courage for is up for personal interpretation
Well, I would think a bottle of Jack would be appropriate for summoning up some "courage".
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The problem here isn't so much traveling at Mach 1.5 (I'm sure the pressure suit is well insulated and heat resitant to avoid the cold and the heat) but its the point where she breaks the sound barrier. After that, it should be smooth sailing, since she's passed her own shockwave. However, I still do not belive this will be a considerable problem. remeber, an airplane is many many times more massive than a human being. It will generate a much much more powerful shockwave which it will then have to overcome once it approaches the speed of sound. A single human woman isn't going to have this problem. In addition, remeber, surface area for objects is typically a in a higher ratio to mass for less massive objects (i.e humans) than massive objects (i.e. jet aircraft). For a simple experiment in this, throw an ant, a cat, yourself, and a horse down a 100ft mine shaft. The ant is going to hit the ground with little to no damage. The cat may break a leg or too, but will live. You will more likely than not die. The horse will splatter. Same thing applies to the drag forces about the fusalage of a plane and about this woman. Its going to be relatively much less for the woman.
My, my. Do we have a case of desparate denial here or what?
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
A similar jump was done in 1960 by the Air Force. Project Excelsior was a pre-NASA experiment to see if it was possible for pilots and astronauts to eject from these kinds of altitudes (102,800 feet to be exact, which took 4 minutes and 36 seconds). They solved the spinning problem by deploying a small stabilizing chute first to slow him down. This site says Captain Kittinger almost died on the first attempt when the stabilizing chute tangled and he blacked out. Luckily, the main chute was set to deploy automatically. Apparently his landing words of wisdom were "Thank you, God, thank you."
We're all under the illusion that there is a such thing as perpetual freefall. 31 miles up! That's going to add some freefall time to your log book! Let's see. My charts stop at 15k feet. Assuming you open at 2500 ft, that's somewhere around 75 seconds of freefall, through approximately 2.5 miles of very thick air. I wonder how long this jump will last?
I'm sure that the danger that they refer to is related to the thinness of the air. Without air blowing by you, you can't control which way your body is turning. If you can't control that, then you can't prevent a spin. That would be bad.
BTW, Cheryl Stearns is among the elite skygods. She's got a gazillion jumps, and a bunch of style and accuracy championships. She's been a fabulous ambassador to the sport, and should rightfully be credited as one of the sport's most important participants.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
I know that the skydiver isn't going to need ceramic tiles like the space shuttle. But, there will be some heat produced during the fall. Think of it this way: a 100Kg body is at 165,000 feet above sea level. It contains a large amount of potential energy due to the height. Almost all of that potential energy has to be dissipated away as heat before the body comes to rest at the ground. Can anybody who still remembers their basic physics compute the amount of heat that should be produced? How much of it will end up in the skydiver? I guess a lot of the heat will end up in the air you are falling thru, so this probably isn't a big deal. But I bet the amount of heat involved would incinerate you if you weren't being air-cooled by a 100mph wind for most of the fall.
I wish the lady good luck, (lots and LOTS of luck!!)but that type of jump has been done before. She will be the first female to do so however. Capt. J. W. Kittinger Jr. jumped from a balloon on 6/2/1957 at a altitude of 96,000 feet. He also jumped from 102,800 feet on 8/16/1960. Check out "Project Man High" for details.
OF course you are correct... but...
It's all about air density.
It's easy to hit speeds over mach during freefall at such high altitude because there is almost no air resistance. Yes, an f-15 achieve 2.5M, but has thermal issues (as does concorde, etc). That' sbecause of the realatively low altitude they work at. (A concorde cannot do Mach speeds anywhere near sea level either, it must be at around 50,000 feet.)
Given that only G is driving her downwards, she will slow down, not heat up, when encountering ever-thickening atmosphere.
One standing on a platform accelerating at 1G could not tell the difference between acceleration, or standing in a 1G field.
...that is actially how the space suit they were wearing in the A12 (CIA Blackbird) was tested in the late 50's. Since back then it was top secret, it wasn't officially aknowledged, but it did happen. Some film footage of it is shown occasionally on the Discovery channel. The guy who did it also broke the sound barrier, and to date it is the only human to break the sound barrier 'unpowered'.
Seems like there's not much left to do after something like this. I suppose some nuts will try to set a new record by having sex while they jump from 31 mi. up.
Re enrty speed of space shuttle is about Mach 30, so she should be okay.
10) Could possibly run into the Mir spacestation
9) Only source of hot air big enough to get baloon that high is the new Holoween Document
8) Appearing on Fox's Scariest Baloon jumps
7) Who wants to be the showoff of skydivers?
6) I'd get bored, need to be around shiny objects
5) Training would leave very little time to post Top 10 lists on slashdot
4) What if you have to use the bathroom in the middle of the jump?
3) When was the last time you saw a skydiver on TRL?
2) The pressure suit makes you look fat
1) Hitting the ground
my other penis is a vagina
They started spinning so fast that they broke apart. The air is so thin that there's no damping whatsoever.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
No.. The spee of sound up there is roughly simiilar to at sea level.
As others point out in other threads, the speed of sound is a function of temperature, not pressure (though they are, of course, related).
And, fyi, saying she will be doing 'mach 1.5' means *specifically* that she will be going at 1.5 x the speed of sound *under her current conditions*. SO she absolutely WILL be doing mach, specifically because the air is so thin.
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balls of steel.
T2/T1 = 1.32 for a normal shock at M=1.5.
After, that, adiabatic compression would give
T0/T2 = 1 +(g-1)/2*M^2, where M=.7 is the post shock Mach number.
So that gives T0/T1 about 1.45. At 165,000 ft. you're in the isothermal layer that averages about -70 deg. F., or 203K. So the stagnation temperature on her suit would be about 21 deg. F.
So, nope, she wouldn't burn up. Even if you consider viscous heating, the turbulent recovery factor would be O(1), so she's not going to feel anything much hotter than that.
Too bad. If I had moderator points now I'd have given you a +1 funny. Well guess not.
No, he was first. It's just than coming in at Mach 1.5, he got here before his post caught up.
OK... well somebody needs a life.
nuff said
my other penis is a vagina