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Skydiving Across the English Channel
loonix_gangsta writes "Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian, has become the first person to skydive 35 km (22 miles) across the English Channel. Wearing a jumpsuit with a large carbon fin strapped to his back he reached speeds of up to 360 km/h. The whole flight took approximately 14 minutes. The newsitem is being covered by the BBC, SkyNews
and CNN."
You know, the plane is blowing up, Bond puts two in the bad guy and grabs a boogie board then straps it to his back. The music kicks in ("DAA DAA DOOOM DAA-DAA, DAA-DAA-DAA"), Bond grabs the gal, and whoosh, out the door.
From the CNN article: "He said cloud cover meant he could not see where he was going and had to follow his two planes across the Channel.". I bet nobody believed the pilot of the 747 at first. "No really, was a guy, with a rocket pack or something, honest!".
I saw this on the news just two hours ago, and I knew it would get posted on here.
Oh, and FP. I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
American girls and American guys will always stand up and salute; Will always recognize when we see ol' glory flying. There's a lot of men dead, so we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head.
My daddy served in the army, Where he lost his right eye. But he flew a flag out in our yard 'til the day that he died. He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me to grow up and live happy in the land of the free.
Now this nation that I love has fallen under attack. A mighty sucker punch came flying in from somewhere in the back. Soon as we could see clearly through our big black eye, man we lit up your world like the Fourth of July.
Hey Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list, and the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist. And the eagle will fly, and there's gonna be Hell, when you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell! It's gonna feel like the whole wide world is raining down
on you... Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White and Blue! Oh, Justice will be served and the battle will rage. This big dog will fight when you
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Hey Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list, and the Statue of Liberty started
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"jumpsuit with a large carbon fin strapped to his back "
So, does he play 'Shark' when he gets into the water?
Apparently his backpack was running Linux, that's how he stayed up for so long ;-)
The newsitem is being covered by the BBC, SkyNews and CNN.
.haeger
How appropriate.
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Can it still be called skydiving in this case? Looks more like he was just the external payload for a small glider! Still, looks like fun.
no need for a ticket and all.
"Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it..."
"No, actually, it's Felix Baumgartner."
"Oh."
thats just fucking cool
He must have accelerated slowly.
.23h == 82.8km
14 minutes is ~0.23 hours. 360km/h *
What interests me, is how he managed to accelerate up to the 360 kph mark, and slow back down, without the sharp sudden stop that I associate with skydiving. (C'mon you know you saw him bouncing along a field until he smacked into an old hardwood)
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Mr Baumgartner had prepared for three years for this flight, with rigorous training including strapping himself on to the top of a speeding Porsche.
Now that's just the kind of project lead up I need. Somewhat more exciting than preparing 3 years for a product launch that involves little more than phoning around organising four different companies and keeping them all on track.
I need a change of pace.
"with a large carbon fin strapped to his back"
This is a ricey-car reply waiting to happen
I don't see how hard this could be with wings and 5+ miles of altitude to work with. However, it is pretty cool.
Now only if people could really fly... . . . Planes dont count... . . . Jumping out of a plane and gliding 35 km doesnt count either.
-- "Why would you quote your self?" -Me.
1. Add a heat sheild.
2. Add pressure suit.
3. Increase altitude to 62 miles.
4. Find X-Prize team loony enough to let someone jump out the door.
...
6. Profit.
(Seriously, as an occasional skydiver/former paratrooper, this sounds like a f--king blast.)
blog |
[insert obligatory beowulf cluster joke]
Mr Baumgartner had prepared for three years for this flight, with rigorous training including strapping himself on to the top of a speeding Porsche.
Did the driver know ?
"What Officer, a man strapped to the roof of the car as we went down the AutoBahn ?"
"Yes sir"
"I don't belive you, why isn't he there now"
"He dropped off over the bridge and glided over the river"
"Have you been drinking officer ?"
Blow into the bag son, blow into the bag.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This is sure a better idea than our friend Ron Obvious's attempt to JUMP the english channel.
We could have saved a lot of money and time with this methodology.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Never fails to surprise me the lengths they'd go to - what's wrong with the 737 wheel arches?
Which is odd given that the guy flew from Dover to France, i.e.\ was comming from west by north-west.
Skydiver in record Channel flight An Austrian man has become the first person to skydive across the English Channel. Felix Baumgartner glided 22 miles across the Channel Watch the flight Felix Baumgartner leapt from a plane above Dover at 0509 BST, landing 22 miles (35 kilometres) away in Cap Blanc-Nez near Calais just 14 minutes later. He wore only an aerodynamic jumpsuit with a 6-foot (1.8-metre) carbon fin strapped to his back, an oxygen tank from which to breathe, and a parachute to land. He told the BBC just after landing he was exhausted but the jump was "great". "It was total freedom. If you step out of theaeroplane at this altitude, it's perfect because you see the Sun rise right over there. It's the beginning of the day. "You're totally alone, there's just you, your equipment, your wing - and your skills. I like it." The freefall was stressful but "great", said Baumgartner The 34-year-old former mechanic said there had been a few problems at the beginning of the flight. A cameraman following him passed out through lack of oxygen in the plane before the jump. And when he jumped his legs and glider got entangled and he had to cut his glider into pieces, he said. It was also extremely cold initially - with temperatures of minus 40 Celsius - and cloud cover meant he could not see where he was going. "I couldn't see the other side so I had no reference point. I was flying over the clouds all the time. "But in the last 2,000 metres, I could see those lights right over there, so I knew I was going to make it." 360 km per hour Mr Baumgartner said the plane was at 30,000 ft (9,000 m) when he jumped - and he initially reached speeds of 360 km (220 miles) per hour. For most of the freefall, he was travelling at about 220 km (135 miles) per hour, he said. Baumgartner parachuted into Calais The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Calais, who was watching the flight, said Mr Baumgartner's journey had made a strange spectacle. "At first he was just a distant speck hurtling through the morning sky, only occasionally visible between the clouds. With his carbon fibre wings silhouetted against the rising Sun it was a bizarre sight." The process of leaping out of the plane involved lots of delicate manoeuvring, she said. "Clearly he had to judge just the right minute to jump out of the plane so he could ensure the right currents. "He was saying any single mistake in the way he uses his body or the way he places himself could put him off course - could be very dangerous." There was something ridiculously daring about this challenge BBC correspondent Caroline Wyatt
'I watched 'Birdman' land'
Mr Baumgartner had prepared for three years for this flight, with rigorous training including strapping himself on to the top of a speeding Porsche.
But he hinted he was still thirsty for a new challenge.
"This was my biggest project so far but there's still something left, so don't worry," he said. "It's top secret, but it's going to be awesome."
The Austrian is no stranger to daredevil feats, usually launched from great heights.
In 1999, he jumped from the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur - the tallest buildings in the world.
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We now return you to your scheduled mental opiates.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I forsee a day when humans will attach themselves to ever-larger winged contraptions and travel further and further with each passing year. Perhaps, some day in the far future, these "aero-planes" might be equipped with powerful "jet-engines" which would enable the intrepid pioneers of the sky to travel across the very oceans themselves. Perhaps pretzels could also be served on these voyages.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
I think he's jumped the shark though
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
From the BBC article:
"Mr Baumgartner had prepared for three years for this flight, with rigorous training including strapping himself on to the top of a speeding Porsche."
Are we sure this isn't a Darwin Award?
...to mention kangaroos, barbies, shrimps, or anything to do with Australia gets to follow him, but without a chute... :)
Game dev and music blog
Man, that's something that you would expect to see in a Bond movie.
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You know, the plane is blowing up, Bond puts two in the bad guy and grabs a boogie board then straps it to his back. The music kicks in ("DAA DAA DOOOM DAA-DAA, DAA-DAA-DAA"), Bond grabs the gal, and whoosh, out the door.
From the CNN article: "He said cloud cover meant he could not see where he was going and had to follow his two planes across the Channel.". I bet nobody believed the pilot of the 747 at first. "No really, was a guy, with a rocket pack or something, honest!".
I HAVE TEH POWER
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Since when were you allowed to strap a small aircraft to your back and call it skydiving?
imagine a flying Palestinian suicide bomber...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
funniest thing I've read on slashdot this week. made me spit coke on my monitor
It's funny how both Sky News and BBC say the speed reached is 220 mph and how CNN says it's 200 km/h. Hmm... someone's obviously got it wrong. ;-)
;-) It'd require READING ALL THREE ARTICLES.
But then again, who (here) is to notice this discrepancy.
I'm sure the French are thinking, "Oh, great! Yet another way for our country to be invaded!"
How much velocity is necessary to start horizontal flight? I mean, what would have kept someone from strapping their glass desktop cover to their back and jumping outta the window?
The more you scare people, the more they will pay you
Here is a picture of his Red Bull Sponsored Carbon wing in action.
Does the picture remind anyone else of the old cartoon?
Swim across the channel, tunnel under the channel, ride that hovercraft across the channel, skydive across the channel...I'm going to get a truck full of liquid nitrogen and drive across the channel.
I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
Maybe
Aahh... You mean La Manche Channel... You should have said so.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Ace McCloud from The Centurians. Click the first image link.
Read it and weep you "defcon jump" weenies!
Ok, it's very cool, looks really fun, and it's an impressive feat, but can you really call it skydiving if you strap wings on yourself? What's with calling it a "fin"? I'm sorry, but those are wings. I'm pretty sure that a bird that high up with an oxygen tank could "skydive" (AKA glide") 35 km too.
Now, if someone wants to try this with only a parachute strapped to their back, then I'll agree with you that it's skydiving. All this guy did was fly across the English Channel in a really small glider that has a parachute instead of landing gear.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
"With the aid of a specially engineered carbon composite wing. Baumgartner will leap out of a transport plane from flight leve 270 (9000 meter - the height of Mount Everest) and then soar towards another world record at over 360km/h. If he succeeds, he will be the first person to have crossed the channel unaided, in free fall."
He's not really in free fall, it's in a glide with a wing that provides some lift and direction. Hardly seems "unaided" and in fact, his own statement above states that he's "aided" by the wing.
Still, it looks very very cool.
WingSuits have become pretty popular in skydiving the last years, which differs from this one in that is has no rigid parts (like carbon). Don't know if you can fly across the channel with it, but you can do some pretty amazing stuff. Check out: this
for a crazy example.
101st-airborne-becoming-jealous
The 101st isn't airborne in the parachute sense anymore.
It's the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) which means they fly around in helicopters now.
The 101st at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, provides forcible entry capability through heliborne 'air assault' operations. Capable of inserting a 4,000 soldier combined arms task force, 150-kilometers into enemy terrain in one lift, and possessing 281 helicopters, including three battalions of Apache attack helicopters.
The only parachutes really associated with the 101st would be the Parachute Demonstration Team.
For parachuting in the US military, that's the role of the 82nd Airborne Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
The pioneer of this idea was Leo Valentin. He made several rigid wing skydives in the 1950s.
Given that terminal velocity for a skydiver is around 200km/h, I'm guessing the CNN article got it right. I don't see how strapping a rather large wing to your back could manage to nearly double that speed.
-BbT
70 children under the age of five died from starvation in the time it took the parent poster to post his message.
Or at least something very similar. Bond and the american agent ride on top of similar wings to get into North Korea.
When I read about this and saw the picture, I immediately thought of Scaled Composites' entry Space Ship One and jumping from it at apogee. Space Ship One returns to earth in a high drag configuration to minimize aerodynamic heating (which would be important for a parachutist).
As for the technology being available, this was first done in 1962 by USAF Capt. Joe Kittinger.
The only element required now is to find somebody stupid enough to try it.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
...but this takes the cake.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
That was OK. I liked the scene where she was running better. "That's right....bounce for Daddy...ooooh"
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
So much for skydiving.
badddaaabooommm
Thank you, there will be a repeat performance at 3:00 and again at 5:00.
Seriously though, this dude is my hero. I never heard of him before this story, but strapping a wing on your back and jumping out of a plane at 30,000 feet. Damn, what a cool way to die.
That is how I wanna go out.
I am gonna be the coolest dude in heaven.
Or hell. Depending on your outlook on such things.
Hmmm, take a look at this links here and here
;-) but sometimes these guys stretch things a bit far... But what do you expect from Bolehland (Boleh in malay means can or can do so literally, it's the land of anything possible ;-)
I know I'm supposed to be patriotic (being a Malaysian myself
They have a website to support the event, unfortunately it is in malay, but maybe there's some info in english somewhere.. Look here
But all started from the English Channel Challenge 2003, check it out here!
Will sys-admin for food
Main Entry: skydiving
Pronunciation: -"dI-vi[ng]
Function: noun
Date: 1957
: the sport of jumping from an airplane at a moderate altitude (as 6000 feet) and executing various body maneuvers before pulling the rip cord of a parachute
It seems to me that the addition of a wing has changed the nature of the achievement.
Sadly, the wife said no. I guess it's another tie for me. /me cries.
Ok, we all understand that he had wings on, get over it.
I'd like to see somone (Angelina Jolie) do something like this (Tomb Raider 2) off of a tall building or something. No seriously! I think it could work... Forget the wings, try flaps of fabric between your extremities. Yeah...
Self realization: I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?"
Red Bull.
Red Bull gives you wings...
Here's a couple of guys that added wings to their sky diving suits so they can glide. The wings are made of fabric and inflate like a parasail. A pair of wings fit between each arm and torso and a third wing between their legs.
Apparently, they were not the first to sky dive with wings strapped on. Of interest is the survival rate of people who have tried this in the past: something like 4% if I remember correctly.
Check out The Flight of the Bird Men .
Is it a Bird ? Is it a Plane ?
No, Actually it's Fartman playing with a lighter...
Oh Gosh !
8p
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
While the photo on the BBC article shows a "backpack" with hard wings sticking out of it, the description (especially that of his legs getting tangled in the rear wings) sounds more like a "Birdman" type suit.
Popular Science did a great article on gliding/sky diving with wings featuring the Birdman suits. Read it here.
This article has some good info that helps answer comments made below about diving with wings not really being free-fall, but in fact being a form of gliding.
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
BASE jumped off the statue of Christ in Rio, which is 30m.
"It's the lowest base jump in the world," said jump organiser Stefan Aufschnaiter. "Normally you need 50 or 60 metres. It's extremely dangerous," he said.
As you can imagine. BASE jumping is a sport with a pretty high fatality rate.
I live in Dover (where he jumped from) and the local radio was reporting yesterday about how the coastguard were pretty pissed off with him, he hadn't checked with them first and there was a decent chance that he was going to come down in the World's busiest shipping lane and they would have to go rescue him.
Suck figs.
When does a fin become a glider?
I wonder if he came in at the right angle and at the right speed.... Could he also become the first person to skip across the English Channel. Now that would be something to see.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Here is Leo Valentin's 1950s version
I really think what that Austrian skydiver demonstrated may have some real military applications.
Imagine US Special Forces soldiers wearing these suits (which have been coated with radar-absorbing materials to reduce radar cross-section) and being launched from 32,000 feet on a C-17 cargo plane at night. They could glide 30 miles or more, which would allow these forces to be inserted far into enemy territory.
(Come to think of it, the US Special Forces may already HAVE this capability.)
...Some Austrian guy threw himself headlong into France, caught them all by surprise with the audacity and speed of it... ...And there wasn't a white flag of surrender in sight.
And as for diagonal speed, I don't see why the plane wouldn't already be heading towards France when he jumped out of it. That way he's already got 150mph or so of forwards velocity. (That's about how it looks from the illustration in the BBC article.)
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Just had to put in my $0.02 - the 101st has been jealous of ANYONE with a parachute for the last 50 or so years - ever since theirs were taken away and traded for helicopters... (OTOH, the 82nd boys might be jealous)
So we can point at him and laugh!
from CNN:
...jumping from an aircraft above the English port of Dover and landing near Calais six minutes and 22 seconds later with crowds...
from BBC:
...leapt from a plane above Dover at 0509 BST, landing 22 miles (35 kilometres) away in Cap Blanc-Nez near Calais just 14 minutes later...
Can't decide if he went the right way? Haggis to snails?
I looked at the pictures an the BBC. It looks like the one in ToyStory!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Say _what_?
if you go 360 kmh, mostly downward in the beginning, your horizontal velocity will be considerably less.
did you think he was 6 feet from the water the whole time when he did this?!
imagine a right triangle whose height is 22 miles, base is the English Channel and create its hypotenuse...well, you went to school, you do it.
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BBC says:
.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
I can't believe after all these comments not a single person has quoted Monty Python and the jump accross the english channel. For shame. Unfournattly I can't find it, but here is the DVD.
Yeah but what is it in a REAL rate? You know, MPH.
For his next feat he's going to eat Chichester Cathedral.
Parachutes will explode if deployed over a certain speed. Most are recommended to open under 150 knots.
A skydivers must first use their body position to slow to a safe deployment speed. It usually only takes a few seconds.
You know, being Austrian and all.
The diagram at the bottom of the BBC report doesn't do any justice to his feat. He jumped at an altitude of 9,000 m (or 9 km), and traveled a distance of 35 km -- nearly 4 times the distance of his initial height! It's like if I was 10 feet above the ground, I had to do a long distance jump of almost 40 feet. As a point of comparison, Carl Lewis' best for the long jump in track and field was a little longer than 29 feet (and that was with a fast running start). The picture at the bottom of the BBC article should have been closer to scale -- just looking at it, one might think that he just had to glide two times the distance of his initial height.
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22 miles? Psh. Had he the foresight to put R-Type stickers on his wing/fin/thing, he would have made it to London, easy.
sudo eat my shorts
What's the big deal about this being the English Channel? Swimming across it, yes. It's over twenty miles and the water's friggin' cold and you get to lay down on dry land after it's over.
But skydiving across it? "Across" implies that you started on land, not at a point five miles above that land. He could just as easily skydived that much horizontal distance anywhere else in the world and it would have (probably) been just as much of an accomplishment
Just seems like a strange sort of headline to me, that's all. It's like this guy was just trying to think of a way to get across the English Channel that no one else had done yet, and this was all he could come up with.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Go here [oracle.com] and see how Oracle can't even maintain their own Search engine on their web site. For even more fun, click the Search link that is provided by the error message! Oracle FAILS IT!!!!!!!! Big TIME! This proves yet again that Oracle is a piece of shit! Boy am I glad that I steered my company away from that turd and onto MySQL.
Wile E. Coyote in his batsuit burning into the english shore at 360 Kph.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I was wondering how he was able to afford it - Red Bull $ponsored him. also, Skynews had the correct time for his flight 6 minutes instead of 14 - makes sense - and makes his average speed about 150mph.
Finally, note that he did strap himself to a honda civic for testing. He would have looked rediculous, like those (front wheel drive) hondas with big spoiler/wing on the back and a pepsi can for a muffler.
"It's the lowest base jump in the world," said jump organiser Stefan Aufschnaiter. "Normally you need 50 or 60 metres. It's extremely dangerous," he said.
I am now about to attempt to break the "lowest base jump" world record - and whats more I will do it without using a paracute.
3...2...1...
Successfully completed with no injuries.
I claim the new record with my fearless jump from a piece of paper to the ground - 0.1mm!
beat that!
No, you can't wash your face in my sig!
Apart from the weird contraption that he strapped on his back, what is the big news here? My former army unit and special forces all across NATO have done HAHO (High Altitude High Opening) jumps that go more than 50km since the 80s. Usually with predecessors of the G9. The main problem is that it's extremly cold at 8-10,000 meters and that you have to jump with supplemental oxygen. Don't try this at home, people have gotten frostbite and even died in exercises.
Im picturing an army of Muhammads flying across the atlantic with bomb clusters strapped to themselves. Ofcourse due to flight time provisions of night time sandles, turban press and a copy of "Suicide For Dummies" or "All-ah Need Is My AK47" is also provided by the MAD (Muslim Air Drop) squad.
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We'll be seeing these on Foxx news when the US invades Iran...or N. Korea...or Liberia...or East St. Louis...
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. - HST
... is the fact that the UK (where the BBC and Sky News are based) uses (nominally at least) the metric system and the US(where CNN HQ are) uses Imperial (or English, British or whatever is called) system.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It's another publicity-seeking idiot.
- He claims he's the airplane. He's no more the airplane than the pilot of a hangglider.
- He also claims to have the lowest base jump (from the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro) because the statue is about 100 ft. He neglects to say that he jumped all the way to the bottom of the hill.
That's the speed you are going when you hit the Airport Terminal.
She did quite well but did not get an opportunity to build / test her design.
Would have been interesting.
That's incredible! The article also said:
Mr Baumgartner said the plane was at 30,000 ft (9,000 m) when he jumped - and he initially reached speeds of 360 km (220 miles) per hour. For most of the freefall, he was travelling at about 220 km (135 miles) per hour, he said.
Well, that's not so incredible now. The BBC diagram makes things reasonably clear. 9km up 36km long, surprisingly enough gives you a path that's not that much longer than 37 km, we'll call it 39 because it was an arc. His maximum speed was 360 km/hr and he slowed down as he got closer to the ground. Fortunately for him, his chute opened and he got that great sudden stop that comes before you get a much greater stop. 14 minutes must have felt like an eternity.
His glide angle was a respectable 1 verticle to 4 horizontal.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Mr Baumgartner said the plane was at 30,000 ft (9,000 m) when he jumped - and he initially reached speeds of 360 km (220 miles) per hour.
So which system do you want to use, metric or imperial?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Was the jumper's name "Ron Obvious" and was he carrying a bag of bricks? Next week, he will try to eat an entire Anglican Cathedral.
Now would he have jumped out at 30km height, he would have broken the sound barrier and then, slowed down to 220kph.
Mach I at 30 km (18.6 miles) is about 675 mph. He was travelling, at his fastest, at 360 kmh (200 mph), nowhere near the sound barrier at any altitude. The sound barrier increases and decreases even as altitude increases, but it never goes lower than about 660 mph. Here's a chart of Mach 1 at different altitudes.
(On an entirely different note, has anyone besides me noticed that the quality of Slashdot moderation has degraded over the last year or so? I haven't been "assigned" mod points since the great move West, but I know I used to do a better job than what passes for moderation these days. The mod system needs something way much more effective than the current M2 system which does absolutely nothing. I mean, we're talking about something fundamental as the speed of sound.)
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There's also HAHO.
I have no knowledge of the incident you may be describing, and furthermore, any information I may have I would not be at liberty to reveal.
-cp-
I always thought that the human body had trouble at altitudes above 20,000feet simply because of the lack of airpressure.
:) (although I acknoledge that this is the other way around... returning to a higher air pressure)
Even though he had an oxygen supply would the rapid change of air pressure cause him serious problems? His ears... severe headaches... risk of seizures... yadda ? And what about the guy who dropped from 100,000 feet?
Christ look what happens to a scuba diver if he returns to the surface too quickly... the compressed air in his blood expands to fuck him up
The crossing the Channel is regarded as a big barrier since The Daily Mail sponsored a competition to cross the channel, which was won by Louis Bleriot (1909?). Since the Channel is the first significant distance between major powers (England/France) it meant new means of post, transport and communication, and aslo meant that flying could be commercialised.
Since then, flyers have regarded it as a sort of first step
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Yo, Jackson, we got it the first time, you have over 900 jumps.
I have more than 0 jumps (well, 1) and you don't see me noising it about in multiple posts, do you?
I heard this finnish guy is going to strap two austrians to his side and attempt
to break his record.
this is bad. the austrians have harnessed the power of the squirrel! squirrel power is strengthwise seconded only by wombat power! A REVOLUTION IS IN ORDER! DOGPILE ON MARVIN!
there's this neat little gadget you should get. Its called a LIFE!
And a TURBO sticker on the butt.
The question is did he eat beans before the flight?
-- &&
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"That's not flying! That's falling with style." ;)
-- Woody
All kidding aside, due props to the fellow. Anyone else had flashbacks to Pilotwings 64 on the Nintendo 64?
Is use of the terms "skydiving" and "free fall" really correct when the guy achieved 35 kilometers horizontal motion for only 9 kilometers of vertical motion? Sounds more like "gliding" to me...
(for comparison, it's equivalent to a 26% incline, about the same as an average ski-slope)
Wow! 220 kilos per hour. That's what I call a weight loss. Or was it $220000/h? Or kilometers per hour (km/h)? Too bad we'll never know.
He might have been mucking around with a wing for three years. I'll bet my bottom dollar it was not something that people would call training (e.g. concerted effort to develop skills to handle wing). The main thing to take from all the claims about speed, danger, etc is that this is a stuntman with an eye for publicity. Of course his life was in danger every second. Of course he trained for 3 years.
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yeah if I didn't roll my nose I'd get "dump.. sniv- bang!"
also keep in mind that the 150 knot rated deployment speed on most parachutes is fine for the parachute no matter what you're doing, but the harness is designed to distribute the force nicely on *you* only if you aren't in a particularly fast forward track.
Hell even if you throw out in a moderate track (like 15 knots forward) you can smack your chin on your clavicle and really leave yourself with a sore neck.
I would have been impressed if he had landed that wing instead of copping out and pulling the chute. he did less than a hang-glider The guys that Air-board at least do more than just lay there, they do stunts and change directions. Now if he would have bled off that airspeed, and flared up to a landing... that would have been worthy of /.
One of my all time favorites; Monty Python's Ron Obvious of Neaps End attempts to jump the English Channel
Instruction Booklet. How to escape from cuba to usa, or from usa to mexico, or from mexico back to cuba? 1. Make stunt 2. Everyone will be so busy admiring your stunt they'll forget that you just happily passed the border without even a passport check!
Michael, what do you know about the 101st Airborne? Hello, they jump using staitic line not freefall.
This guy is way out there
The world record hang glider flight is over 430 miles, and he started at like 2000 feet agl.
The BBC article put it nicely "Falling with style" just like Buzz Lightyear.
Steal this sig.
No, I didn't read every comment. However, in the reading I did do, I found no mention of the fact that Red Bull energy drink was an obvious sponsor. Their logo emblazoned on his wing and chest.
I thought it was funny as hell.
I've got about 900 skydives, and have jumped several times from 50km, and I was not cold at all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Should we really consider this a "skydive"? I think it's more closly realted to hang gliding although with a much smaller wing.
The opinions expressed here are not mine, but those of these dang voices in my head.
It's not just the cost of the insurance. If Jolie had been hurt, there'd have been no movie, and that's a disaster no matter how much insurance you have. When they were filming LOTR in New Zealand, the producers forbad the actors from participating in dangerous sports. But hang-gliding and skydiving are big there (what better way to see the famouse NZ landscape?!), and this rule was widely ignored. Which made for a lot of hair-tearing. If they'd had to cancel production, they might have gotten most of their production costs back from insurance, but it'd have been a big setback in a bunch of careers, not to mention a couple years out of the lives of a lot of people.