Sonic Skydive's Real Aim Is To Help Astronauts Survive 140
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."'"
Re:Mrs. Jonathan Clark? (Score:1, Insightful)
So wait. Was this 'Jonathan Clark' a woman? Or was the 'astronaut' gay? Is this a weird typo?
Jonathan Clark is the husband of a female astronaut.
Re:Not quite... (Score:4, 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.
Re:Not quite... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, as pointed out by the grandparent, high altitude parachuting is a solution in search of a problem.
We'd slap ourselves on the forehead and design the emergency system to bring them down to 30,000 feet, or more likely all the way to the ground. 100,00 feet is a stupid altitude to leave an emergency capsule since you're too high and will still be going too fast. (In terms of that perennial Slashdot favorite the automobile analogy: this is like equipping a car with airbags - that only function when the car is going 100MPH or faster.)
By the time you've built the complex parachute system required to slow down enough to safely exit that capsule at 100,000 feet, you haven't saved any weight or volume over the lighter and simpler (because you can design the capsule to slow down via drag, taking away work from the parachute system.) system to slow down the capsule enough to exit at 30,000 feet, in fact it will be heavier and bulkier. (Look at all the fancy tricks NASA has to employ for landing on Mars - a much simpler task than getting out at 100,000 feet.) All you need to add to get from 100,000 to 30,000 feet, once you've got a capsule that can descend to 100,000 feet, is a few ounces of compressed O2 for the few extra minutes the astronaut will be breathing in the capsule - O2 he'll need in his suit anyway if he's parachuting independently.
And you've gotten to 30,000 feet - there's no particular reason to leave the safety of the capsule for the complexity and risk of ejecting or otherwise departing the capsule for a parachute jump. Might as well come all the way to the surface.
Re:Two Separate Problems (Score:4, 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).
Re:cool (Score:4, Insightful)
Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler
I guess Sherpas don't count?