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Sonic Skydive's Real Aim Is To Help Astronauts Survive
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."'"
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
"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.
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.
"But they're also doing important work, potentially groundbreaking work."
Only if the parachute fails...