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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!".
"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.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
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.
"Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it..."
"No, actually, it's Felix Baumgartner."
"Oh."
One would think not, as the Blitz was in the other direction...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
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.
"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.
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.)
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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
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.
Which is odd given that the guy flew from Dover to France, i.e.\ was comming from west by north-west.
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.
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?
Since when were you allowed to strap a small aircraft to your back and call it skydiving?
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.
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
No, there are reports of older french citizens cutting rail lines and blowing up bridges when they saw something that fast coming from england to france...
Ace McCloud from The Centurians. Click the first image link.
"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.
The pioneer of this idea was Leo Valentin. He made several rigid wing skydives in the 1950s.
...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
from the same page: However, by diving or "standing up" in free fall, any experienced skydiver can learn to reach speeds of over 160-180MPH. Speeds of over 200MPH require significant practice to achieve. The record free fall speed, done without any special equipment, is 321MPH. Obviously, it is desirable to slow back down to 110MPH before parachute opening."
also note that air pressure is lower, which causes less friction. his position is very close to a dive or 'stand-up' free-fall. I'm guessing CNN got it wrong, especially since I've seen some more sources reporting this, and all reported speeds way in excess of 200 km/h
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
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.
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.
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...
BBC says:
.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
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
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.
Nah, we would have said :
;-)
"La perfide Albion nous envahi de nouveau !
Boutons les anglois volants hors de France"
Btw we would have been nice and we would have paid his
eurostar ticket. Back to London at 334.7km/h !!!
(new record from yesterday)
Gone quick as he came
*grin*
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.
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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I was rather surprised too... sorry if this is redundant already, but I found it on http://www.saifai.co.uk/pse10.shtml
... Mr Vercotti... .. I like the police a lot, I've got a lot of time for them.
Here goes:
Voice Over: There is an epic quality about the sea which has throughout history stirred the hearts and minds of Englishmen of all nations. Sir Francis Drake, Captain Webb, Nelson of Trafalgar and Scott of the Antartic - all rose to the challenge of the mighty ocean. And today another Englishman may add his name to the golden roll of history: Mr Ron Obvious of Neaps End. For today, Ron Obvious hopes to be the first man to jump the Channel.
Ron runs up to group of cheering supporters. An interviewer addresses him.
Interviewer: Ron, now let's just get this quite clear - you're intending to jump across the English Channel?
Ron: Oh yes, that is correct, yes.
Interviewer: And, er, just how far is that?
Ron: Oh, well it's twenty-six miles from here to Calais.
Interviewer: Er, that's to the beach at Calais?
Ron: Well, no, no, provided I get a good lift off and maybe a gust of breeze over the French coast, I shall be jumping into the centre of Calais itself.
Brief shot of group of Frenchmen with banner. 'Fin de Cross-Channel jump'.
Interviewer: Ron are you using any special techniques to jump this great distance?
Ron: Oh no, no. I shall be using an ordinary two-footed jump, er, straight up in the air and across the Channel.
Interviewer: I see. Er, Ron, what is the furthest distance that you've jumped, er, so far?
Ron: Er, oh, eleven foot six inches at Motspur Park on July 22nd. Er, but I have done nearly twelve feet unofficially.
Ron breaks off to make training-type movements.
Interviewer: I see. Er, Ron, Ron, Ron, aren't you worried Ron, aren't you worried jumping twenty-six miles across the sea?
Ron Oh, well no, no, no, no. It is in fact easier to jump over sea than over dry land.
Interviewer: Well how is that?
Ron Er, well my manager explained it to me. You see if you're five miles out over the English Channel, with nothing but sea underneath you, er, there is a very great impetus to say in the air.
Interviewer: I see. Well, er, thank you very much Ron and the very best of luck.
Ron Thank you. Thank you.
Interviewer: (to camera) The man behind Ron's cross-Channel jump is his manager Mr Luigi Vercotti. (turns to speak to Vercotti, who has a Mafia suit and dark glasses) Mr Vercotti, er Mr Vercotti
Mr Vercotti: What? (mumbles protestations of innocence) I don't know what you're talking about.
Interviewer: Er, no, we're from the BBC, Mr Vercotti.
Mr Vercotti: Who?
Interviewer: The BBC.
Mr Vercotti: Oh, oh. I see. I thought, I thought you were the er .
Interviewer: Mr, er, Mr Vercotti, what is your chief task as Ron's manager?
Mr Vercotti: Well my main task is, er, to fix a sponsor for the big jump.
Interviewer: And who is the sponsor?
Mr Vercotti: The Chippenham Brick Company. Ah, they, er, pay all the bills, er, in return for which Ron will be carrying half a hundredweight of their bricks.
We see a passport officer checking Ron's passport.
Interviewer: I see. Well, er, it looks as if Ron is ready now. He's got the bricks. He's had his passport checked and he's all set to go. And he's off on the first ever cross-Channel jump. (Ron runs down the beach and jumps; he lands about four feet into the water) Will Ron be trying the cross-Channel jump again soon?
Mr Vercotti: No. No. I'm taking him off the jumps. Er, because I've got something lined up for Ron next week that I think is very much more up his street.
Interviewer: Er, what's that?
Mr Vercotti: Er, Ron is going to eat Chichester Cathedral.
Cut to Chichester Cathedral. Ron walks up to it, brushing his teeth.
Interviewer: Well, there he goes, Ron Obvious of Neaps End, in an attempt which could make him the first man ever to eat an entire Anglican Cathedral.
Ron takes a hefty bite at a buttress, screams an