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Felix Baumgartner's Supersonic Skydive Attempt
First time accepted submitter madcarrots writes "The Red Bull Stratos space jump is about to take place. The balloon is filling up and launch is expected around 10 AM MDT. Check out the live feed of the inflation process... it's beautiful!" After some delays it looks like the jump is finally going to happen. UPDATE: The jump was a success. Baumgartner is on the ground and apparently fine.
Has identified the limits of server capacity.
FINALLY... A Slashdot posting that doesn't appear AFTER the event! :-)
Am I the only person for whom the video feed is broken?
I wasn't around for the first moon landing, but I'm sure glad I'm alive to witness this. It's something I'll be able to tell my kids about 20 years down the road. Once again the human race proves it's indomitable spirit and someday we will spread beyond the confines of our tiny blue marble.
and soon falling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MrIxH6DToXQ#!
As of now
69,400 ft
Wouldnt hurt to see the type of bandwidth used by this event, compared to other major events of a similar type (such as the space shuttle launch and the mars rovers launches).
Some sort of stats would be interesting to look at (IDK if they would serve any purpose, but even as just interesting facts they would be interesting)
They are holding up the video feed until they pry his hands off the safety rail.
Yes getting people interested in science with stunts is a complete waste of time. NASA has totally failed to capture the imaginative of kids these days, even though decades ago they were doing things very similar to this. Sure this isn't exactly going to the moon, but there is a lot of science behind this, and if it helps people become more interested, then it is far from a waste of time or money.
Why don't they use Hydrogen for things like this (one-time use balloon) and preserve more Helium for scientific and medical use (and for safe party balloons)?
Or is helium depletion no longer a pressing problem with the current natural gas boom?
Hydrogen has been largely discredited as the root cause of the Hindenberg disaster, is it possible to use it safely in a high altitude research balloon?
Hard to get entertainment like that these days.
Here is the direct URL to Youtube, in case the Red Bull Stratos site isn't working for people:
http://www.youtube.com/user/redbull?v=MrIxH6DToXQ
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
For me Red Bull sure is doing a lot for pushing science - granted, it's mostly "How can I make this go faster with less safety" - but the result of their various experiments are helping the greater good, just think about all the advancements in the field of patching people up after "Hey, Y'all watch this" moments.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if it helps people become more interested
An interesting, almost too serious /. poll would be what inspired you as a /.er-type person whatever you call yourself.
For me it was hard sci fi and the feeling I could get involved in amateur science type stuff much more so than watching others perform vaguely technical stunts. Stunts are for the grade school kids who didn't care, watched a stunt on TV for 5 minutes with modest curiosity, still don't care.
Clarke and Asimov and ham radio and owning a cheap microscope and cheap telescope and a computer had a hell of a lot more to do with it than those taco bell guys who offered a free taco if their floating target was hit by pieces of the re-entering Mir space station.
On the other side I think the guy is pretty impressive to have hacked the overall corporate system to get to do something that to him is pretty cool. If he gets turned into a bug on the windshield, perhaps I could convince red bull to sponsor me doing my hobby... I'm sure no one else cares, and that wouldn't even be the point, merely that I would enjoy having someone else pay for my "hobby" probably at the cost of bolting on some corporate logo...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
No it said -45F a few seconds ago. That's nothing really. Here in Minnesota we get that cold every winter and that doesn't stop anyone from being out there for prolonged periods.
If the entire jump lasts less than 10 mins the worst that could happen is he might get some chapped lips and perhaps a touch of frost bite on his nose.
*shrug*
The capsule is made from polycarbonates, not from metal. Thus it is just bright, not shiny.
According to the live feed it's still being troubleshooted as at 94,000ft, so still no progress. Presumably there are other heaters on the suit that can keep him warm enough during the descent, so the only issue I could see would be if the lack of helmet heating might cause the helmet visor to mist up during descent. There is no talk about aborting the jump at all on the feed, so I'd guess it's not a critical issue.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
ALL: The Greater Good.
rewriting history since 2109
It is still worth watching. It will still be considered a historic attempt.
It's around 12C in the capsule, but outside it would be -45C plus wind factor of several hundred km/h. If the heat in his helmet is really not working, I guess they probably will abort the jump?
Well, here's someone who's never lived thru a Wisconsin blizzard. When the weather's like that up here, not only do we not have heated helmets, we have fat guys strip to the waste and body paint a big "G" on their belly to get their picture on TV during football games. Of course that takes about a six pack of beer and our parachutist probably doesn't have a keg up there, or if he does its full of red bull energy drink not Miller. A better comparison would be motorcyclists and everyone up here knows at least one lunatic who goes out riding in the winter (very dangerous due to the loose gravel and road salt, not to mention ice slicks)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You could see fog forming inside the helmet with each breath
rewriting history since 2109
It's also on The Discovery Channel HD, so you can watch it old school. The broadcast on Discovery is a little in front of the Youtube broadcast, by about 1000 feet of ascent. So, it's like time travelling into the future!!!
Highest altitude in a manned balloon just broken...
If it goes wrong it'll still set a record for the most expensive attempt to dig a hole to China without the use of a shovel.
It would put him in the Indian Ocean, southern hemisphere, roughly at -34.45221847282653, 75.2783203125
rewriting history since 2109
Just confirmed that he is to jump
That was a bit akward. Not sure if it was a communication issue or nerves, but he was not responding to the request to begin the egress checklist and said something I couldn't hear that definitely didn't sound like confidence. Looks like he eventually pulled it together, and you could hear the relief in the communication managers voice.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I wonder what he will say to mark the occasion. I opt for "A giant leap for man, a small step for mankind"
No sound barrier, less speed than a Nomad. Lame.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
He's on the ground. It was a successful jump, and the first person has come up to him. It looks like he has the world record, I think it was more than 39 000 meters!
Well done. But hell, bloody scary I'm sure. I'd love to do the parachute stage, but not the free fall.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
FYI, youtube is up to 6.58 million "watching now".
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Yeah, what a jerk. He only broke the record for the highest manned balloon flight, highest freefall and fastest freefall. How dare he only break 3 out of 4 records and narrowly miss mach!? Not to mention all the data he collected. But you're right, his guy just seriously needs to go away.
Never start vast projects with half-vast ideas.
For it to be an official record, doesn't he need to do it twice, once in each direction?
"Baumgartner is ground, and apparently fine(ly)."
I don't get it how this has anything to emergency bailouts from spacecrafts, as the commentator claimed. It's one thing to jump from a stationary balloon, a completely different thing to try to bail out from a vehicle flying in the Mach 5-25 range.
Ezekiel 23:20
Forgot to add:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound
The speed of sound is the distance travelled during a unit of time by a sound wave propagating through an elastic medium. In dry air at 20 C (68 F), the speed of sound is 343.2 metres per second (1,126 ft/s). This is 1,236 kilometres per hour (768 mph), or about one kilometer in three seconds or approximately one mile in five seconds.
Looks like for a while in free fall he was actually in a spin and admitted to passing out. You could see the flickering/tumbling of his image on the video feed from the ground. Managed to pull it out though.
When he landed they should have given him a "Red Bull" rather than a bottle of water.
I find it amazing that he didn't break the sound barrier. How can their calculations have been wrong? I would have thought with the effort that went into this they'd have been able to predict exactly how fast he'd go, how high he'd jump from, etc.
If the estimated speed on screen during his jump was anything to go by, he smashed the sound barrier (though that is yet to be confirmed). The only record he didn't come away with was longest (duration) free fall, which is still held by Kittinger. It's not clear yet why he pulled his chute early, although he sounded like he was worrying about something.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If it's just Red Bull footing the bill and not taxpayers, then it's up to them whether it's a waste or not. I think they definitely did get quite a lot of visibility from this project.
I think it's a pretty good experiment in video live streaming. The London Olympics probably was bigger . But from what I see this one's pretty big too.
To be fair though I am not sure that my bunny fur bomber hat would fit inside of that helmet. I have however been snowmobiling at some amazingly cold temperatures -30+ F. As long as the skin is not directly exposed at those temps life is good. A small leak however or a few seconds of exposed skin and frostbite is immediate.
When it is that cold though my first thought is to grab a ice auger, beer and go fishing.
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You are a moron. Felix Baumgartner is an Austrian (you know, from Austria, in Europe). The company sponsoring the event, Red Bull, is also Austrian. So ah, I guess, fuck you.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
Things like this are good to show your kids to demonstrate what a Real American can do with guts and determination and also to show them the indomitability of the American spirit and how we don't need to take any God damn shit from the Chinks, Japs, Eurotrash etc.
If he had have died it would have additionally shown your kids that jumping off high things is very dangerous.
So really it's win/win.
Except he is Austrian.....
Things like this are good to show your kids to demonstrate what a Real Austrian can do with guts and determination and also to show them the indomitability of the Austrian spirit and how we don't need to take any God damn shit from the Chinks, Japs, Eurotrash etc.
If he had have died it would have additionally shown your kids that jumping off high things is very dangerous.
So really it's win/win.
Fixed that for you.
I'm getting that too, possibly due to the ~7.1 million concurrent viewers of the jump.
His face visor fogged up, and that's what the helmet heater is supposed to prevent. The air in the suit for the duration he's exposed isn't going to get cold enough to frostbite anyways. It's likely for about 3 minutes of his freefall he couldn't see jack. So much for the nice view he may have been looking forward to. He broke most of the records except for longest freefall, and that's because he was going too fast to get that one before hitting the altitude where he had to pull the chute.
I think he was going half-blind and a little fustrated due to that, that's why he was asking for some direction from ground. It also sounded like he was holding his breath a little to limit the visor fogging. Successful otherwise.
Coverage was great, if NASA wants some better PR on manned missions there is still a little they could copy from that.
Just over 2 hours to get up, and under 10min back down. Little bit of worrysome tumble on the start, but a real nice recovery once he hit thicker air. Quite a trip!
The preliminary reports are that Baumgartner did not break the record for longest free fall. That record was (and evidently still is) held by Joe Kittinger, the man who previously held the record for highest jump and who was the only person allowed to talk directly to Baumgartner from mission control. Did Baumgartner do this on purpose? I seriously doubt it, but it is neat in a way that Kittinger gets to keep that record.
He has to pass through the troposphere/stratosphere boundary. That's both colder and somewhat denser air than he's in at 120k feet so more heat loss. I don't what he'll face, but I recall -70F around 70-80k feet was possible.
No need to move, the earth rotates.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
he didn't break the sound barrier and he didn't beat the longest free fall either. what a fucking asshole. he was 30 mph too slow to break sound and 30 seconds too short on the free fall. what a god damn prick. i never wanna see this dickhead again.
OK: you show us how it should be done. Until then shut up!
How much Helium was used?
What happened to the ballon?
What happened to the capsule?
He did manage to break the sound barrier. You didn't manage to get the sound barrier right.
(Just some hints: 768 mph is the sound barrier at 1 bar pressure and 20C ambient temperature.)
I find it amazing that he didn't break the sound barrier. How can their calculations have been wrong? I would have thought with the effort that went into this they'd have been able to predict exactly how fast he'd go, how high he'd jump from, etc.
I'm waiting for the press conference to confirm this, but from what I've read before, it's not a case of, "if you drop a human from that altitude, he will break the speed of sound." It required effort on his part. He needed to be in a stable aerodynamic flight, and instead he was tumbling all around. By the time he got stable, the air wasn't thin enough.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Did anyone record the live stream? Having missed the event itself, I'd like to watch it.
Get back in your kangaroo and piss off. No one cares about your pedantry.
The same link applies to the press conference, which is about to start.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
I managed to drag my kids away from Minecraft from the moment the hatch opened to about a minute after he jumped, so although I don't know how many millions that cost, it was a price worth paying. Well done science!
AFAIK the only kangaroos in Austria are in the zoo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqpkzsl6ggY&bpctr=1350247098
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
... roughly at -34.45221847282653, 75.2783203125
That's roughly? Are you a Vulcan, or positronic?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Ok, he did go mach 1.24 so apparently they can do math. Good for you Felix, you crazy, crazy, suicidal man.
Exit Height: 128,100 Feet
Free Fall Time: 4 Minutes 20 Seconds
Free Fall Distance: 119,846 Feet
Free Fall Speed: 833.9 Miles Per Hour or Mach 1.24
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
39,045m Altitude
36,500m freefall
1342.8 km/h
Mach 1.24
Chuck Yeager did Mach 1.06 on the 14th October 1947.
Andy Green did Mach 1.02 on the 15th October 1997.
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
According to Wikipedia, Red Bull is Austrian, but that one of the owners is Thai. And I probably didn't need to respond to the troll. But I did anyway. Life goes on.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
How much Helium was used?
Just a little bit more than absolutely necessary.
What happened to the ballon?
It go bye bye. Someone will find a big plastic bag at some point in the future.
What happened to the capsule?
It parachuted back to the ground and was recovered not too far from his landing point.
Posts like yours are good to show everyone why Americans need to stay in school and become educated. First, they would learn basic grammar. Second, they would learn to read, which would allow them to learn that the jumper in the story is Austrian, not American.
I am not sure what you are bitter about. Yeah things could have gone wrong. People from the ground center would have wondered if he passed out during the tumble (well it has happened to people before. He could have become unconscious, the parachute deploys automatically at the right altitude, and he might have required some help from ground crew, but thats about it). Two many things would have to go wrong for him to have died or get serious injured in this. And I am not where you got this hype about man against atmosphere (some sources would be nice).
And I disagree with your notion about risk takers. First, risk takers are as necessary to the society as much as moderate people. Society places more value on them, because they are rare, and risk takers are necessary for the society.
"roughly" modified HOW it would place him, not the where.
--Live long and avoid inefficiency.
rewriting history since 2109
Does anyone have a good, thorough explanation of the physics? How he deals with terminal velocity and stuff?
What a wuss. Call me when does it with just a normal jumpsuit.
Because above the Armstrong Line (63,000ft) your bodily fluids (sweat, saliva, tears and blood) boil. That makes you die very quickly. You have to use a pressure suit.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
My only problem with this whole thing is that it seems to be getting more attention, coverage, and certainly live-internet views than landing an SUV on fucking Mars did. And people are covering it like it's "the next SpaceX accomplishment" or something. It's impressive. It's cool. However, it's just a dude in a pressurized suit flopping out of a platform strung to a balloon. This may push the limits of a man, but I don't know what it exactly pushes technologically or explorationally[*].
[*] I don't think that's a word, but whatever.
red bull started by an austrian taking an interest in a thai drink on a vacation. so it all makes sense in the end
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So ah, I guess, fuck you.
No, properly it's "Hasta la vista, baby."
To speak in in the vernacular of the only Austrian whom Americans can think of.
We can also think of the Julie Andrews (by way of the Sound of Music) and Mozart. After that the next name on the list would be Crocodile Dundee, and then the discussion turns to an Internet meme started by a president who asked, "is our childrens learning?"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So, that was a nice jump. Let us hope Baumgartner won't die slipping on a banana peel as it happened once to the first guy to jump the Niagara Falls in a barrel who died slipping on an orange peel.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Anybody knows if Redbull plans to release in the public the scientific data gathered during the jump? It would be interesting to have the crowd being able to dig the data.
Achille Talon
Hop!
The heater in his visor failed and he couldn't see anything. They'd had problems with it on the way up but stupidly decided to jump anyway.
When it fogged up he couldn't see, and must have decided to pull the chute because he couldn't get that crazy old fart on the ground to tell him how much time he had left.
That idiot ground controller blew the whole jump by being completely inept, inattentive, and generally idiotic.
Even after he pulled the chute, he could not even get a competent wind report from ground - the first reports were just wrong, and you could hear someone SCREAMING at him to correct it in the background.
Oh, and the ground controller also advised Baumgartner to skip a step in the checklist, thinking it must have already been done, and you could hear someone SCREAMING at him in the background for that, too, after which they executed the step in the checklist.
I am quite frankly amazed that he survived his jump, honestly, with the incompetence of that idiotic controller.
Am I the only one who thought that idiotic ground controller was going to get him killed?
Between advising him to skip a vital step in the checklist, and being incapable of responding to his repeated requests for an accurate weather report on the way down, it's amazing he made it down unscathed.
You could even hear people screaming at him to get his shit together in the background when he told the jumper to skip the step in the checklist, and when he repeatedly gave him incorrect weather information.
Pathetic.
"Austrian Felix Baumgartner has become the first skydiver to go faster than the speed of sound, reaching a maximum velocity of 833.9mph (1,342km/h)."
It sure was something seeing the guy in space one minute, then less than 10 minutes later, seeing him gracefully land on his feet.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
The "idiot" ground controller was none other than Joseph Kittinger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger) who was the previous
altitude jump record holder back in 1960. Read up about him and his role before you spout off.
His voice of high altitude jumping experience was one of several tactics used to calm the claustrophobia that had struck Felix when the limited mobility and vision of the required pressure suit threatened the scrub the whole deal.
NASA uses astronauts for CAPCOM for the same trust/experience/situational awareness role.
That being said, a bit more operational training for the team as a whole couldn't have hurt.
Because above the Armstrong Line (63,000ft) your bodily fluids (sweat, saliva, tears and blood) boil.
Of course that limit is in debate now, what with all the credible doping accusations and all.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Hey, C.B.! Proving that Wisconsinites know how to party, eh? Would be nice to have a beer out on the ice with you. :)
--KK
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
The sound barrier increases with decreasing pressure. Higher altitudes have a higher speed of sound, so he may not have broken it.
Not a sentence!
Or I'm an idiot and swapped the direction of increase.
Not a sentence!
Capsule was returned to earth via parachute, to be recovered. Balloon will land eventually, somewhere, or was dragged down by the capsule after being vented. The helium was not really much of a waste, because the Helium used for lifting operations like this is the waste helium that comes out of the process of making liquid helium for medical and scientific purposes. Turns out, you can only purify helium so far, and so you get a tank of nice clean liquid helium, and also tank with a mix of helium and various other gasses that is not useful for much besides party balloons and Felix Baumgartner's death wishes.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Maybe you're watching the promo video for the jump, which WAS CGI.
Honestly, was this just a troll post?
Things like this are good to show your kids to demonstrate what a Real American can do with guts and determination and also to show them the indomitability of the American spirit and how we don't need to take any God damn shit from the Chinks, Japs, Eurotrash etc.
If he had have died it would have additionally shown your kids that jumping off high things is very dangerous.
So really it's win/win.
Except he is Austrian.....
*Cringe*
Also, random racial trolling por qué?
if its not about space elevators, its not gettting me into space so i can hardly be enthusiastic about it
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
the purer it is, the more effective a coolant it is.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Damn outed :) I guess I have had this nickname too long!
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