Slashdot Mirror
Baumgartner Completes 13.5-Mile Free-Fall Jump, Aims For Record
An anonymous reader writes "On Thursday Felix Baumgartner climbed into a capsule carried by a balloon, floated up to 71,500 feet, and jumped out. He free-fell through the atmosphere for almost four minutes, hitting an estimated top speed of 364 mph. 'I wanted to open the parachute after descending for a while but I noticed that I was still at an altitude of 50,000ft,' he said. After finally deploying his chute, he fell for a bit over four more minutes, before successfully touching down in the New Mexico Desert. This was a test to prepare him for a jump of 120,000 feet later this summer, during which Baumgartner will break the record for highest free-fall jump — and the sound barrier. '... a 36-pound spacesuit is all that separates Baumgartner from a hostile world that would boil the blood in his body. Baumgartner will wear a chest pack crammed with data-hungry instruments to help ground controllers monitor the attempt — and log scientific data. Some will keep tabs on his heart rate and oxygen intake to see how a body in a spacesuit reacts to a boundary no one has broken (and lived to tell the tale): the speed of sound.'"
The braking from supersonic phase is going to be interesting.
Ordinary parachuting maxes out around 200km/h. Back in the 1960s, the last time a 100,000+ foot jump was tried, someone hit 998km/h. They did not have an easy ride down.
The whole attempt will be a win, win situation for him - he's guaranteed to make it into the Guinness Book.
After the attempt, he'll either he'll have the record for the highest freefall jump, or he'll have the record for the world's largest pizza.
#DeleteChrome
No. If he survives till the ground it will be the longest free fall jump. Survival is not required for being the first person to break the sound barrier without a means of propulsion.
Sorry to hear you got bored halfway, bro.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
If this works, maybe the people who were designing things like the MOOSE orbital bail-out system weren't as crazy as everyone thought....
(see: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/moose.htm )
Check out Treesandthings.com for offbeat news
I'd like to point out that your blood doesn't boil in a low pressure environment, even if that's a vacuum. As it's contained by your skin and tissues that are rather noncompliant tissue and thus maintain a certain level of internal pressure.
However, the starling forces are severely disrupted, resulting in oedema of any exposed tissue, this however can be compensated for by using skin tight clothing. NASA did in fact once research a wet-suit like space suit that wouldn't be pressure sealed, concept was good, however, if the suit is kinked and the pressure is relieved you get oedema, and this is hard to prevent in regions such as around joints and crotch.
So basically hipsters can jump from 100,000+ feet safely?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
What's really cool is the Col. Joe Kittinger (who has the record of 102,000+ feet since I was 2) is his biggest fan & supporter. Joe did it old school...just throw on a G-suit, space suit, parachute and jump. When he landed, he popped out a lighter & smoked a cigarette LOL. Times have changed. That HQ photo of Baumgartner standing on the edge of the capsule is my unlock screen on my phone. Cool picture. Hope they do one at 120K feet.
As far as I'm concerned, yes.
From TFA: "Thirty seconds after leaping, he’ll exceed the speed of sound in the thin upper atmosphere by traveling almost 700 miles per hour."
The speed of of sound in the upper atmosphere is _not_ 700 miles per hour. That figure relates to the speed of sound at one atmosphere and normal temperatures and also has to consider partial pressures including water vapor. In the upper atmosphere, the speed of sound is much less.
Claims similar to this over the years that the space shuttle is traveling at Mach 25 are just as ill-informed, since the "mach" number is supposed to be based on local conditions, not at some hypothetical place on a beach (one atmosphere, nice temperatures). It is wrong to simply divide some velocity by the speed of sound at sea level and then apply it to conditions present at the object's location.
Only if they push a lawyer out in front of them to act as a cushion
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
My inner relativist tells me that he's not moving at all, he's merely pulling the earth toward him.
You are likely talking about a documentary regarding Joseph Kittinger, the guy who currently holds the high altitude jump record and set that record in 1960. The reason why it hasn't been tried again is in part due to the fact that such jumps have been perceived as being extremely dangerous. Project Excelsior, on the third jump by Col. Kittinger, finally did reach an ultimate velocity of 614 mph, or about nine-tenths of the speed of sound. Basically going the speed of many commercial jetliners if you want a comparison.
Part of the current effort for extreme altitude sky dives is in part to suggest an alternative re-entry method for astronauts that might be able to simply parachute to the Earth from LEO using a small thruster pack and perhaps a surfboard sized reentry shield. On top of that, it is one of the few major international aviation records that might be possible for somebody with private funding to break instead of a major military organization.
No, there hasn't been somebody who broke Mach 1 (aka the speed of sound) due to free fall. The extreme altitude being attempted by Baumgartner is going to get to that velocity though, in part because the air is so thin at that altitude that it won't offer much resistance until he gets much lower.
Hipsters won't notice...
Required reading for internet skeptics
Part of the current effort for extreme altitude sky dives is in part to suggest an alternative re-entry method for astronauts that might be able to simply parachute to the Earth from LEO
Re-entry from orbit is a LOT harder - the lateral speed needed for LEO is ~7 km/s or about 21 times the speed of sound (at sea level). I suppose this is a start but from orbit you'll have ~400 times more KE to dissipate somehow which will not be trivial.