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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."
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
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.
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.
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.
...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
Turbulence in from the wind moving around the buildings would be a problem, that would probably make it as bad of an option as jumping.
l oh a/terrain/terrain.html
l if t.htm
Plus a glass desktop cover is going to be heavy and it don't have an airfoil to it so it's going to drop like a piece of glass and get a flutter to it.
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/cameo/dr_a
"Even if air flow into New York City is relatively steady and the winds predictable, ALOHA's first assumption is not likely to be met within the city itself. Buildings may block and divert the wind. Air flowing past large obstructions such as buildings forms into turbulent eddies, just as eddies form immediately downstream of a boulder or bridge piling in a river. Air flowing across an urban landscape composed of many buildings breaks up into irregular patterns of eddies of various sizes, speeds, and strengths. Winds blowing through city streets can speed up, slow down, and markedly change direction. In fact, wind blowing past an obstruction such as a building sometimes can completely reverse direction. "
"New York City contains many "street canyons" long, straight through streets bordered by tall buildings. A street canyon can funnel the wind at a speed and in a direction different from what a user may have entered into ALOHA. Similarly, it can act to channel a cloud. The cloud, prevented by the walls of buildings from dispersing in the crosswind direction, may travel much farther downwind than ALOHA would predict before diluting below the level of concern."
That link is in relation to computer modeling of NBC weapons release in an urban setting, but it talks about the complexity of winds in a city.
Velocity doesn't make something fly or glide, it's the lift provided from the wing. The basic idea is that a flow over a curved surface has lower pressure than the flow over a flat surface, so you curve the top of a wing and the lower pressure there allows the wing to create lift. The faster the flow is the more lift you get, which is why aircraft need engines to provide foreward movement.
http://www.aa.washington.edu/faculty/eberhardt/
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.
BBC says:
.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
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.
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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