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Sonic Skydive's Real Aim Is To Help Astronauts Survive

Posted by timothy on from the recoup-the-training-costs-at-least dept.

mattnyc99 writes "Earlier this year came reports that Felix Baumgartner (the daredevil who flew across the English Channel) would be attempting to jump from a balloon at least 120,000 feet altitude, break the sound barrier, and live. Now comes a big investigative story from Esquire's issue on achieving the impossible, which details the former NASA team dedicated to making sure Baumgartner's Stratos project will instruct the future safety of manned space flight (including Jonathan Clark, the husband of an astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster). From the article (which also includes pics and video shot by the amateur space photographer we've discussed here before): 'that's also precisely what makes Stratos great. It's more like Mercury than the shuttle: They're taking risks, making things up as they go along. But they're also doing important work, potentially groundbreaking work. They're doing what NASA no longer has the balls to do. Hell, he'd do it for free. He is doing it for free. Stratos only picks up his travel expenses. Clark looks at his friend, shrugs. "This is new space."'"

23 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Project Excelsior by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who like this sort of thing, you might want to read up on Project Excelsior. Men have been doing those edge-of-space dives since the 60's. As part of that project, Joseph Kittinger jumped from 102,800 ft. Pretty amazing accomplishment for 1960 to even get up that high, much less jump from there.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Project Excelsior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      RTFA. First off, the guy who did the 100k ft jump is alive and consulting on the new jump. Second, they don't know this jump is possible, because jumping from 150,000 feet involved breaking the sound barrier, which no one's ever done before.

    2. Re:Project Excelsior by Jurily · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's rude to spoil a good argument with facts.

    3. Re:Project Excelsior by SleazyRidr · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, they just make the other person believe what they already said more anyway.

      --
      Is 1563649 a prime number?
  2. Re:Mrs. Jonathan Clark? by __aagctu1952 · · Score: 4, Informative

    (including Jonathan Clark, the husband of an astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster)

    So wait. Was this 'Jonathan Clark' a woman? Or was the 'astronaut' gay? Is this a weird typo?

    Are you for real? You do know that women can be astronauts too, right?
    The crew of STS-107 consisted of 5 men and 2 women. One of those was Laurel Clark.

  3. Red Bull, anyone? by VTI9600 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I find it odd that the summary neither links to nor mentions the official project page. Perhaps the author has something against Red Bull (or that it uses MS Silverlight). In any case, this is the Red Bull Stratos project, not the Baumgartner Stratos Project. This is some pretty exciting stuff...Besides being totally bad-ass, Kittinger's original jump paved the way for manned space exploration. It may seem tacky to some, but credit should be given where credit is due, and as Red Bull is the primary sponsor of the project, they deserve to be mentioned.

    1. Re:Red Bull, anyone? by VTI9600 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      For another great moment in skydiving/Red Bull history check out this video of Travis Pastrana. I heard he got banned for life by the USPA for this stunt. Apparently its illegal in the US to exit an airplane without a parachute.

    2. Re:Red Bull, anyone? by Burger-Eater · · Score: 4, Informative

      That jump wasn't done in the U.S. Also, the USPA can't ban anyone from doing anything, the FAA however can pull a pilots license for allowing divers to pull bandit jumps like this. That jump has been done many many times since the 80's but most people only know about Pastrana's.

  4. Video of Kittinger Jumping by catchblue22 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is a music video by Boards of Canada, in which they show the original footage of Joseph Kittinger jumping from 102,800 ft. Much of the last part of the video is from something else, but the first part is real. It really is haunting to see him push off of the balloon platform.

    --
    This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
    1. Re:Video of Kittinger Jumping by gandhi_2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The real trip is, with the rarefied atmosphere there was no sound. When he jumped, he wasn't even sure he was falling to the earth or just floating around. Only when he managed to see the balloon getting smaller and smaller "above" him did he feel better.

      --
      THL phish sticks
  5. Not quite... by Angst+Badger · · Score: 4, Informative

    Jumping from a nearly stationary start at 100,000 feet is a very different proposition than reentering the atmosphere at orbital speed. Objects don't burn up just because they're falling through the atmosphere; they burn up because they're entering the atmosphere at very high speeds. I forget the exact value -- LEO isn't my specialty -- but objects in low Earth orbit are traveling somewhere north of 14,000 mph. (Meteors coming in from interplanetary space have even faster velocities measured in km/sec.) A high altitude jump like this may give us some useful data, but it does very little to pave the way for an individual descent from orbit.

    --
    Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
    1. Re:Not quite... by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A high altitude jump like this may give us some useful data, but it does very little to pave the way for an individual descent from orbit.

      However, re-entry is largely a solved problem, whereas high-altitude parachuting isn't. If we had a need for an emergency system to bring astronauts down to 100,000 feet we could probably build a suitable heat-shield and reaction jet control system in a few months, but it won't help if their parachute fails after that.

    2. Re:Not quite... by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 3, Funny

      objects in low Earth orbit are traveling somewhere north of 14,000 mph

      That's why they jump backwards.

      --
      If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
    3. Re:Not quite... by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Other than the fact that the type of casualty which would lead to the need for this kind of escape system is such a far fetched edge case that you might as well stock holy water, garlic, and a gun with silver bullets as well...

      Wihch would you rather have: a big hole in your shuttle heat shield and no chance of surviving, or a big hole in your shuttle heat shield and seven MOOSE packs in a locker that give you some chance of surviving?

      Because while you can probably spare a few hundred kilos for emergency survival, you sure aren't going to carry an escape capsule which can bring your whole crew back to Earth in comfort, just in case it's needed.

    4. Re:Not quite... by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 4, Informative

      If humans can survive at, say, 1000 mph entering the atmosphere, that still implies you have only 100 something miles (or maybe less) to decelerate around 13000 mph. I don't know whether or not this would cause problems, but I'm guessing in order for that to happen, organs are going to get squished

      14000 mph to 1000 mph over a distance of 100 miles would be 12.3 g deceleration for 48 seconds.

      This is survivable with no damage and no loss of consciousness by untrained individuals if they are facing the direction of travel (or, as wikipedia puts it, "eyeballs-in"). The limit for eyeballs-in with no damage or LOC experimentally is about 17g. Eyeball-out is only 12g.

      If the force is parallel to the spine, rather than perpendicular, the numbers are much lower. Around 9g for a trained person in a g suit.

      So, as long as this was done in a controlled fashion, so as to keep the people aligned properly, it would be survivable and not too harmful, at least for healthy people. Probably not too pleasant.

      However, your 100 miles is way to low. It's 100 miles if they are traveling straight down, but they would not be. They are starting with a velocity of 14000 mph perpendicular to straight down. The goal is to end up 100 miles lower with a velocity of 1000 mph or less, so you can enter the atmosphere. You'd do this over much longer than 48 seconds, and travel much farther than 100 miles while doing it. Depending on how much fuel you've got, you could make it arbitrarily gentle.

  6. Doing what NASA won't - don't make me laugh by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "They're doing what NASA no longer has the balls to do."

    It's not like an astronaut will be stepping out of a spacecraft at 100kft, he'll be burnt to a crisp and mangled by the air blast as his craft will still have considerable speed at that altitude.

    If he's doing a personal (individual) recovery as suggested by another poster, then the astronaut will be riding in a small capsule and parachutes for slowing down small capsules are a long solved problem.

    In short, with regards to space safety, this is pretty much a meaningless stunt as it has nothing in common with any but the most far fetched of scenarios.

  7. Two Separate Problems by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is the problem of descending from 120,000 feet with a parachute, which is solvable with space suits, multi-stage parachutes, etc.

    Then there is the problem that this project would not address at all, which is how to decelerate from orbital speed of Mach 12 or so. The space shuttle that broke up on re-entry did so while it was going fast enough that the atmospheric friction would melt metal.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re:Two Separate Problems by joh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There might be other options like using some large and light drag device (like a large balloon) to already brake high up in the atmosphere with much less heating. If you can manage to have a large surface area to weight ratio heating can be quite gentle.

      There have been calculations that a simple table-tennis ball could survive reentry with no further protection for exactly this reason.

      There even have been (russian) tests with inflatable heatshields working in this way. The dense reentry-vehicles with ablating heat shields are mostly a heritage from ICBM technology which depend on going in as fast and straight as possible (they're weapons after all).

    2. Re:Two Separate Problems by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative

      Kittinger used a multiple-stage parachute. He did most of the descent in 4 and a half minutes, with a drogue which kept him from tumbling. At 17K he opened his main chute and took 13 more minutes to descend.

      --
      Bruce Perens.
    3. Re:Two Separate Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I just had the honor of witnessing a conversation between Bruce friggin Perens and a guy with a lower uid than Bruce friggin Perens.

      Words fail. Thank you.

    4. Re:Two Separate Problems by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, the EVA suits and vehicle environments rebreathe, so it would be expected as a weight-saving measure if nothing else. You need 7 lbs of oxygen per hour in a rebreather. But there's more: the suit has to remove carbon dioxide to avoid a toxic atmosphere. So, you need the chemical load to leach 7 lbs of C02 out of air per hour. If you recycle your CO2 leach chemical, you need energy to heat and cool it. And then, you need temperature management.

      When you're finished, it looks like a Mercury capsule :-)

      --
      Bruce Perens.
  8. Not the greatest choice of words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "But they're also doing important work, potentially groundbreaking work."

    Only if the parachute fails...

  9. Re:cool by gandhi_2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler

    I guess Sherpas don't count?

    --
    THL phish sticks