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Felix Baumgartner Prepares for Supersonic Skydive Attempt in New Mexico
Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner has tempted fate with quite a few spectacular skydiving feats; now, he is preparing to be the first man to intentionally exceed the speed of sound by jumping from a balloon instead of staying inside a plane or a rocket. The jump is planned for Tuesday over New Mexico. National Geographic lists some of the various (deadly) things that could go wrong.
i don't care about it or your fucking chemical energy drink.
Exactly, it's about damn time those anti-innovation corporate whores started selling us NUCLEAR energy drinks!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
two ways for the corporate sponsor Red Bull.
1. A successful jump is completed by felix and he enjoys the limited fame that accompanies such a stunt in the form of advertisement and promotion from his sponsor, Red Bull, who in turn reap most of the reward for the act in the form of increased sales and merchandizing rights.
2. Felix, moments after crossing the sound barrier, is torn to shreds in what to bystanders appears as a giant explosion of blood and plastic a few thousand feet in the air. The act is recorded but never released, and Red Bull takes neither responsibility nor interest in the outcome as while it may have advanced science, it did not advance revenue for the quarter.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I've been waiting eleven years for the end of this story.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
He will be going through air, and if you move through air faster than a sound wave would, there are qualitative changes to your aerodynamics.
He will be at "terminal velocity", which means the force of air resistance will equal his own weight.
Considering what happens to the structure of an airplane as it goes transonic, he's taking some interesting chances. Air moving around a body moves at different speeds in different places. When some of it is supersonic and some isn't things are weirder than when you're completely subsonic or completely supersonic.
He is aiming to exceed 690mph at 100,000 feet, which is the speed of sound at that altitude.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's sad to see that even National Geographic now has to tart up the very real risks of this attempt with dramatic bullshit like the first sentence: "the atmosphere above 12 miles, or 63,000 feet (19,200 meters)—known as the Armstrong line (named for Harry George Armstrong, who founded the U.S. Air Force's Department of Space Medicine in 1947)—is so thin that, if not protected, human blood will literally boil. To prevent that, Baumgartner's airtight suit and the capsule around him will be continuously pressurized to create a personal atmosphere that isolates him from the void surrounding him."
Nonsense. Even if you're in an environment of pure vacuum, your circulatory system is *pressurized*. This is called "blood pressure." Your blood will not boil in space. It will outgas, as dissolved gases in it come out of solution, but that's not boiling; Scuba divers who ascend too rapidly get the bends as N2 leaves solution, but their blood doesn't boil, they don't die. Fluids exposed to atmosphere, like the water on the surface of the eyes and lining the mucous membranes will boil, but not the blood.
"The smallest crack in this protective layer would cause almost immediate death."
Again, why tart this up? The guy who holds the current record and who's helping with this jump, Joe Kittinger? He suffered a "crack" in his "protective layer," in one of his gloves. His hand swelled up like a balloon, and it hurt, and he had some bruising/soft tissue damage, but he continued with the mission and his hand returned to normal size when he descended and healed normally.
Sad to see National Geographic turning into Discover.
And I thought that the first person to exceed the speed of sound without a vehicle (as the balloons are vehicles, one must assume the definition to be "while not in one") was a test pilot ejection prior to Chuck. Chuck hold the distinction of the first person to land a plane that traveled above mach1, not the first person to ever travel faster than the speed of sound.
Learn to love Alaska
Like with most balloon payload, the flight train will separate from the balloon. The parachute will open and the gondola (or capsule) will decent at a reasonable speed. Most likely be reused immediately afterwards.
Balloon flights like these cannot be done anywhere. There are reasons for that. Although it comes down relatively slowly (something around 10 m/s I guess from similar payloads), it can still cause damage. Also, you have a 2 football sized (sorry for the journalistic dimensions) balloon coming down... I wouldn't want to be stuck under that.
The nice thing is that once the flight train is separated, the impact points of both balloon and gondola are very predictable. Much more than the actual balloon flight itself. Decent is fast, and only little affected by winds at altitude.
Balloon flights like these (actually not at all like these, but from the balloon type, payload, etc.) are done all the time. Sometimes during stratospheric research campaigns by the dozen. But launches and landings almost always happen in remote desolated areas such as New Mexico, where you can be fairly sure there is nothing but dust in the probable impact zone.
From what I've read, "mach 1" is never higher than ~800mph regardless of altitude so he will in fact be falling faster than the speed of sound.
References:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/sound.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere/q0112.shtml
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/elevation-speed-sound-air-d_1534.html
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mach+1&a=*MC.mach+1-_*Formula.dflt-&f2=120000+ft&f=MachAlt.H_120000+ft
Kittinger jumped from a height of 31km and reached a top speed of 275m/s
I'm looking at the "Guinness Book of Aircraft Facts & Feats" ( published 1984 ) and it says Kittinger hit 714 mph. That's 320 m / s.
Has that claim been adjusted or invalidated since then?
Genuinely curious.
Thanks
This pilot tells his story of ejecting from an F15 at super sonic speed, his weapons officer did not survive : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HecyxhXDepU
Helium gas is not rare in the sense of the word that we have an aboundance of Helium in our atmosphere. In fact, 5.2 ppm of our atmosphere is Helium, which is comparable for instance to the aboundance of Arsenic in the Earth's crust (5.5 ppm). The problem being, that it takes too much energy to extract the Helium from the atmosphere to be an actual resource.
Terminal velocity is a product of the gravitational acceleration versus the air resistance. The resistance is dependant on the density of the atmosphere and is much less at the 100,000 feet point where he will try and hit the speed of sound. As he comes lower, the increasing density will slow him down to the terminal velocity at that altitude.
There actually a difference in terminal velocity between ground level and the 10,000 feet that routine skydiving happens from, about 2% per 1000 feet.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Complete nonsense. Terminal velocity of a skydiver who is assuming the customary body orientation, in the lower atmosphere, is 54 m/s (121 mph - mach 0.16). If his orientation is changed to minimum drag, either through inexperience, loss of consciousness, or deliberately, terminal velocity can reach as much as 90 m/s or more, but this is still under mach 0.3.
Of course there is some variation with body weight and type, but most skydivers are pretty physically fit.
As you point out, and as is obvious, terminal velocity is much higher at high altitude.
85G? Just put a large bucket at the other end.