Skydiver Leaps From 18 Miles Up In 'Space Jump' Practice 192
wooferhound writes "A daredevil leapt from a balloon more than 18 miles above the Earth today, moving one step closer to a so-called 'space jump' that would set the record for the world's highest skydive. Austrian adventurer Felix Baumgartner stepped out of his custom-built capsule at an altitude of 96,640 feet (29,456 meters) above southeastern New Mexico, officials with Red Bull Stratos — the name of Baumgartner's mission — announced today. In today's jump, Baumgartner experienced freefall for three minutes and 48 seconds, reaching a top speed of 536 mph (863 kph), project officials said. Baumgartner then opened his parachute and glided to Earth safely about 10 minutes and 30 seconds after stepping into the void."
First words (Score:5, Funny)
New Extreme Sport (Score:5, Interesting)
If you could run this as a business operation, I wonder how much you could charge people for "space jumps"?
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Call me when we get the screw attack.
Re:New Extreme Sport (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how much you could charge people for "space jumps"?
I'm not sure what the price level would be, but I can tell you that I have pretty much no interest in jumping out of an airplane, but I would do it multiple times if it were required to train for this kind of jump.
I'm pretty sure I could be 117, dying on a bed and, remembering my space jump, say, "fuck yeah" and die happy.
Re:New Extreme Sport (Score:5, Informative)
If you could run this as a business operation, I wonder how much you could charge people for "space jumps"?
I am a licensed skydiver, and I can tell you that the way "normal" jumps are priced is there is a boarding fee generally $10-13 USD and then you pay $1 per thousand feet of altitude. This is whether you get out at 3,000 feet or 13,000 feet. But this is out of an aircraft without needing supplemental oxygen or equipment.
Specialized jumps cost more:
Hot air balloon jumps are usually around $45 and you get out anywhere between 4-6k feet.
Anything above 15,000 feet requires supplemental oxygen, so these jumps can be more expensive.
A civilian HALO jump from 30,000 feet costs around $375.
However none of that applies in this case because of all the specialized equipment for the stratos mission.
For example, the bottom of the capsule is one-use-only. Upon landing, the capsule's bottom absorbs the force of impact and "crumples", so every flight requires a replacement. There is a pressure suit which needs to fit the jumper. There is a custom parachute rig made by Velocity.
Also, the time to altitude takes a very long time, and the winds need to be just right. So it is not uncommon for them to wait days or weeks to have a window to try. They also have a large ground team. So this whole production would need to spin up for each "jumper" meaning at best you could do one or two jumpers every few weeks, at worst, one every month or two.
Not to mention each jumper would need to have a base line skydiving skill set that exceeds what most sport jumpers possess. Figure you would need to have several thousands normal skydives, including HALO jumps, before you could even begin to train for a stratos jump. Training for stratos jump would include many jumps wearing the space suit and custom velocity rig, which is not a standard rig so it has different deployment and emergency procedures. This training would need to include wind tunnel time to work on falling in a stable belly to earth orientation. It would also need to include jumps from an aircraft.
As a business operation you would likely need to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars per jumper, if not millions, and only allow "customers" who meet the qualifications.
So really, you'd have to invest several years in skydiving and have a scrooge mcduck money pond waiting for you at the end of it.
OR, you use the red bull money from all the idiots who drink red bull and you have an awesome adventure on their dime ;)
USPA C-39657
Almost Craig Breedlove Speed! (Score:2)
Breedlove set world land speed records of 500 and 600 mph, and one of his cars got up to about 675 before crashing.
Re:Almost Craig Breedlove Speed! (Score:4, Informative)
Breedlove set world land speed records of 500 and 600 mph, and one of his cars got up to about 675 before crashing.
Its still short of the current land speed record [wikipedia.org] which is 763.035 mph, and slower than the current free fall speed record of 614 mph [wikipedia.org], which was set in 1960 by Joseph Kittinger.
Re:Almost Craig Breedlove Speed! (Score:4, Informative)
Kittinger is a consultant on this project, so I guess he's ok with losing his record :)
Re:Almost Craig Breedlove Speed! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes.
However, the reentry heat one normally thinks of comes from one of two additional vectors (sometimes both!) that make the effect larger than it would be from a simple drop from a balloon.
First, most objects fall from orbit. Depending on how high of an orbit they were in, they were deliberately put at a high lateral orbit speed somewhere below escape velocity.Which as it turns out is pretty damn fast when compared to the atmosphere, so objects returning from orbit "skid in" at high speed compared to the surface.
Some objects from from faster than escape velocity (space rocks, stuff coming back from orbiting the sun or to the moon) and have an additional "get there" velocity.
While a super-atmosphere sky diver might have to contend with speed related friction heat, it's not a large given like it is with other scenarios. With proper propulsion breaking it is possible to step out of a "stopped" capsule after coming in from a moon mission (for example) and drop to the earth in just a specialized suit.
It's not PRACTICAL to do so if you are running a space mission, but it's possible. Kittinger's missions were for investigating other things than reentry from orbit of humans though.
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The air at his Drop Point is very cold, around -70f
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I can't wait until we see an Ares V rocket launch with Nike etc logos emblazoned on it and the astronauts, like a nascar vehicle and driver.
Who ever needs to land a spacecraft now (Score:3)
Astronauts returning home from ISS could just jump, all that's needed is a parachute.
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Re:Who ever needs to land a spacecraft now (Score:4, Insightful)
The ISS orbit height is 230 miles, we aren't quite there yet.
I wouldn't worry about that nearly as much as the 17,227 miles per hour of lateral velocity that you will need to shed along the way down.
Pretty Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Pretty Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
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Two Words:
Capricorn One.
OK. Bad example - OJ Simpson can't act.
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Because they almost blew it with the faked moon landing and don't want to risk that again. Also the cold war is over, so there no good reason to fake such accomplishments.
Re:Pretty Cool (Score:4, Funny)
They've tried. No luck.
Lucas' script has Mars completely populated with cutesy aliens who speak broken English with a (for reasons he refuses to explain) Cockney accent.
Michael Bay's script has the Mars lander crashing in a symphony of explosions.
Kevin Smith's script is entirely about the dysfunctional relationships between the crew during the trip out.
Re:Pretty Cool (Score:4, Funny)
you didn't miss much since it never happened.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=stanley+kubrick+moon+landing
We really, truly did land on the moon.
That's why Armstrong punched out that reporter who asked if they really did it. Y'know, because the Neanderthal who responds to an honest question with unprovoked violence is definitely the more rational, superior man. No, he really landed but had something to hide, something so enormous that it shook his very own idea of how the world worked, that made him so irrational to the point of violence.
The videos were faked because they didn't want us to see what was actually there. Evidence of extraterrestrial life actually near Earth doesn't jive well with keeping the population fat and stupid and dependent on gov't/media (same thing really) and the older influences of religion to define the meaning of their lives. The moon is hollow because it rang like a gong when one of the Apollo spacecraft was crashed into it. The moon perfectly obscures the sun during an eclipse, the dark side never faces the earth, the orbit is not elliptical, it is large compared to the Earth, and therefore generally it could not be a captured body. It's artificial. Whoever built the pyramids at Giza built the moon too. The Bhagivad Gita describes nuclear fucking warfare thousands of years ago, perfectly to the letter the effects of radioactive fallout, then archaeologists found residual radiation in the areas it describes.
See if something is too different from what you were taught to believe by vested interest who want your thinking to be limited to nation-state affairs, then you automatically reject it, just like a good conditioned subject. Facts are facts. Dare to find your own.
Re:Pretty Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
The "reporter" lured Aldrin to a hotel under false pretenses, wasting his whole day. Then he ambushed him, making ridiculous demands. I found a brief snippet from the video, immediately before the punch and I've transcribed what I heard below:
"...you're the one who said you walked on the moon when you didn't. Calling the kettle black, if I ever thought I would say that"
"Would you get it away from me!"
"You're a coward, and a liar, and a thief..."
Then comes the punch. That doesn't really seem like responding to and honest question with unprovoked violence to me. Heck, even Sibrel himself sent a letter of apology (according to Sibrel, anyway) to Aldrin.
I have no idea what to say to the rest of your post. Hollow, artificial moon, built by the same people who built the (extremely small and unimpressive compared to their work on the moon) pyramids at Giza? You just never know quite what to say to that kind of thing. Backing away slowly while smiling reassuringly seems to be the only way to go.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wcrkxOgzhU [youtube.com]
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"You're a coward, and a liar, and a thief..."
Those were certainly fighting words and Aldrin was absolutely right to throw a punch. If more people understood that today, we might have a little less crime, a little more polite society, and possibly even a bit less corporate nonsense.
As far as the hollow moon, I guess that's where the bats in his belfry live in the winter.
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Me too. Also, this needs to be done:
http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/photoshop/4/7/6/138476.jpg [crackedcdn.com]
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Sorry, but everything in that post was stuff that some people actually, seriously believe. Makes it hard to tell when it's a joke. It would be nice if every crazy person out there were just kidding around, but most of the time, they're just crazy.
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Condensed version:
That's no moon... it's a space station.
The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth (Score:5, Funny)
Aliens, nothing! Here, read this before They brainwash you with more disinformation!
The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
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Heh (Score:2)
I'm the original author of this little piece of satire, and it amazes me that it still continues to pop up regularly after more than a decade.
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The truly funny and also incredibly sad thing about this post is that some people out there truly feel exactly this way, even so much as to eating up that bit about Aldrin becoming violent "unprovoked" proving the conspiracy is true. I'm sure this particular post is just is all in jest (I hope), but I've actually spoken to people who act just like this, and it truly makes me sad.
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Dyslexic much? (Score:3)
From the article:
Red Bull Stratos is a mission to the edge of space to an altitude of 37.000 meters to break several records including the sound of speed in freefall
Re:Dyslexic much? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dyslexic much? (Score:5, Funny)
if you want a "kaboom" try an illudium Pu-36 explosive space modulator.
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Or just don't open the chute.
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The creature has stolen the space modulator!!!
Delays... delays...
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From the article:
Red Bull Stratos is a mission to the edge of space to an altitude of 37.000 meters to break several records including the sound of speed in freefall
Somebody should tell them that breaking this record [wikipedia.org] may lend them into troubles with RIAA (label: Rhino/Warner Bros)
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Somebody should tell them that breaking this record [wikipedia.org] may lend them into troubles with RIAA (label: Rhino/Warner Bros)
Pfft. Buncha latecomers [wikipedia.org]
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the sound of speed
vroom, vroom.
They're just quoting Dan Rather (Score:2)
... who said this [anvari.org] while reporting on the first landing of space shuttle Columbia.
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I thought the same. The unit is "km" per hour (therefore "kmh"), while "k" alone only means a thousand of those units. So "kph" means "a thousand of nothing per hour". :-)
Not exactly space as many know it (Score:3)
While these things are somewhat debatable, Baumgartner's future "space jump" is not due to take place in what most consider "space."
FTFA:
Baumgartner has his eyes on an even bigger leap, a "space jump" from 125,000 feet (38,100 m) in the next month or so. (Space, however, is generally considered to begin at an altitude of 62 miles, or 327,000 feet.)
It's still a great feat and laudable they went ahead with it despite ridiculous legal challenges:
Baumgartner and his team had hoped to attempt his record jump in 2010, but they were delayed by a legal challenge that claimed the idea of the dive was earlier suggested to Red Bull by California promoter Daniel Hogan.
Re:Not exactly space as many know it (Score:4, Funny)
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Fastest Human? (Score:2, Interesting)
Did he also attain distinction of being fastest non-propelled human?
Citius, Altius, Fortius? Not quite. (Score:5, Interesting)
Did he also attain distinction of being fastest non-propelled human?
No, I'm pretty sure that record was set by the Apollo 10 re-entry, at close to 40,000 km/h (almost 25,000 mph).
He's not even the fastest skydiver - that record has held for 52 years now - Joseph Kittinger did a free fall in 1960 that lasted 21% longer and reached a top speed 15% faster than what Baumgartner just did.
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The Apollo 10 astronauts were in a capsule, not skydiving, but that hadn't happened when Kittinger set the record in 1960. Even Yuri Gagarin's flight wasn't until 1961, and the U-2 planes only went up to about 70,000 feet.
air resistance (Score:4, Interesting)
Air resistance up to typical skydiving altitude provides sufficient drag to keep the person from accelerating to the point where deceleration would result in so much friction as to vaporize the person. If this guy's really dead-set on jumping from the actual threshold of space...
1. He'll need thermal insulation until he's in the earth atmosphere properly. I hear it's pretty cold up there.
2. I think it's safe to assume he has the oxygen problem licked, because at 12 miles, he'd have suffocated.
3. I understand objects falling from that altitude tend to encounter very little air resistance, which means they pick up a lot of speed. The kind of speed that causes brilliant fireballs to appear in place of anything falling from that height, like asteroids, satellites, and space shuttles.
... I don't see how anyone could survive those kinds of physical stresses while maintaining any level of mobility, or having a silhouette even vaguely resembling a person. The low mass of a person (even one encased in inches-thick ceramic heat shielding, would mean the bow wave shocks would turn anyone inside into goo. Perhaps someone with a better understanding of physics clear up for me why this isn't the case, since I'm pretty sure Red Bull doesn't want their energy drink to be associated with what in my eyes is essentially suicide by thermodynamics?
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The air pressure increases gradually on the way down. Perhaps terminal velocity goes down gradually enough to provide a smooth transition. After all, the objects that typically end up as fireballs entered with quite a bit of extra velocity to start with.
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You are right but also, with thin air you get less heat transfer for cooling, so it is not as simply as that.
Re:air resistance (Score:5, Informative)
If you have very little air resistance, you're not going to be generating any heat (you get hot from the friction caused by the air resistance).
Asteroids, satellites, and space shuttles don't just fall out of the sky, they were already moving fast enough to stay in orbit. Their massive speed helps make them hot. The jumper will not be traveling at orbital speeds, thus the increasing air resistance will be enough to slow him down before the speed+air friction gets high enough to burn him.
Re:air resistance (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:air resistance (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, you don't get hot from the friction; you get hot from compressing the air in front of you.
Kind of like this: Relativistic Baseball [xkcd.com]
Q: What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?
... [ more w/illustrations ]
A: The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher).
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this particular thing you can learn just by using a bicycle pump (and if you're still not convinced, compare it to rubbing a piece of rubber against an aluminum pipe).
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Read up on the ideal gas law [wikipedia.org]. Remember, Piv equals nert.
Re:air resistance (Score:5, Informative)
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For a geostationary satellite, ground velocity is zero. So roughly the same as the speed of the balloon this person jumped from (not taking wind speeds into account). Jumping off a geostationary would involve pushing oneself down towards earth, slowly picking up vertical speed (now I have heard before that it doesn't work exactly like that but I'm not a rocket scientist and it's not important for the sake of the argument). And you would also start to pick up horizontal speed compared to the Earth's surface
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Jumping off a geostationary would involve pushing oneself down towards earth, slowly picking up vertical speed (now I have heard before that it doesn't work exactly like that but I'm not a rocket scientist and it's not important for the sake of the argument).
If we discount friction (wind resistance), this is not enough to reach the surface of the Earth. The momentum gained when pushing down from the space station, will only move the jumper very slowly towards the Earth, and once he has orbited half a revolution and is on the other side of the Earth, the same momentum will take him *away* from Earth again. The net effect is that the orbit will become slighty elliptical.
I doubt he will reach the surface in a reasonable amount of time even if we take friction into
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A geostationary satellite should have 0 ground speed (discounting collisions, tidal forces, whatever).
This as when there is a geostationary satellite, I can point my dish to that point in the sky, and that point is not going to change. So, by the very definition of speed (change in distance per time), the speed of that satellite relative to me on the ground is 0.
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I thought the same thing, and was going to post that, until I did a bit of math on it.
From the altitude of space, in a vacuum at 1G you'll be going almost 3000mph when you hit the ground. If you assume the bulk of the atmosphere capable of slowing you down significantly starts, say, around 20 miles up, you'll still be going 2500mph as you hit that meatier part of the air.
I can't say if that's something survivable or not, but 2500mph is fast enough at 20 miles up that an SR71 needed to be made of titanium to
Re:air resistance (Score:4, Insightful)
Asteroids, Satellites, and space shuttles don't just "fall" from that height. They're already going very, very fast (at least 25,000 km/h) before they hit the atmosphere. There's no way this guy would ever manage to go that fast even if he were dropping from the height of LEO (to be clear, I just mean dropping from the height of, not actually being in LEO). For an idea of what kind of heating he could experience, the Concorde apparently got up to around 120 degrees celcius at its nose travelling at Mach 2. That's clearly too hot for bare skin, but it's not much of a problem for an insulated pressure suit for just a few minutes (and it probably wouldn't even be that long), and his goal of Mach 1 will be pretty hard to reach, let alone Mach 2.
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Concorde's crusing altitude was about 55,000 feet, or 17,000 meters. This guy stepped out at almost twice that altitude, with zero velocity.
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Concorde's crusing altitude was about 55,000 feet, or 17,000 meters. This guy stepped out at almost twice that altitude, with zero velocity.
And reached a maximum speed of Mach .75. That wouldn't even generate enough heat to burn bare skin (although obviously you couldn't safely expose bare skin to those conditions). The point is that there's no way he's going to turn into a "brilliant fireball" as the GGP post suggested. A little insulation, which is needed for the cold anyway, and the heat is not a problem. The Concorde example was just to demonstrate a high upper limit on what could possibly be expected for his jump.
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Um, huh? On reading your above post, then reading your previous reply to me, I've realized that you seem to be under some sort of misapprehension about what I'm saying. Perhaps you think I'm the poster I originally replied to? What _I_ am saying, is that the concerns girlintraining listed: cold, low oxygen, and heating due to atmospheric resistance are more or less a non-issue with basic protective gear (an insulated pressure suit). I gave the Concorde as an example of something that heated up to temperatur
Re:air resistance (Score:5, Informative)
3. I understand objects falling from that altitude tend to encounter very little air resistance, which means they pick up a lot of speed. The kind of speed that causes brilliant fireballs to appear in place of anything falling from that height, like asteroids, satellites, and space shuttles.
Not really. Most things that cause brilliant fireballs have a very high initial velocity (and kinetic energy) which must be dissipated when they first reach the atmosphere. This skydiver started with a vertical velocity of zero.
And since the density gradient of the atmosphere is low, a skydiver's air resistance will build up slowly bleeding off this energy gradually.
All that must be done is to bleed off the skydiver's potential energy. For a 115kg (person + gear. I'm pulling figures out of my *ss here) at 29,500m altitude, this is aprox. 32,700 Joules. Dissipated in 630 seconds, this is an average rate of 51 Watts. Warm, but not out of line with being wrapped in an electric blanket.
That same individual hitting the atmosphere at 7750 m/sec (Shuttle re-entry velocity) would have kinetic energy of 3.45E9 Joules. Over 630 seconds this would be 5.5 megawatts, although the 630 second figure does not represent the re-entry time anymore. That time would be less, giving a higher average dissipation rate. And nothing but a few ashes reaching the ground.
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Dissipated in 630 seconds, this is an average rate of 51 Watts. Warm, but not out of line with being wrapped in an electric blanket.
Why in the world would you think the average rate is even remotely relavent? Peak rate, while not exclusively so, is the primary factor for survivability.
If I have a stick of dynamite with a timer on it, and set it for 23:59 hours, the average energy of the next 24 hours is not going to be my primary concern tomorrow morning.
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1. He'll need thermal insulation *after* he gets into reasonably dense atmosphere, not before. The reason is that the loss of heat by radiation (the only mechanism in vacuum) is comparatively slow. Fast air flow, even one of rarefied air, facilitates a much faster heat removal process.
3. The heat given off by a subsonic object can hardly be likened to a falling meteor.
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Recommended reading: Poul Anderson's Wings of Victory [baenebooks.com].
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Re:air resistance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fail (Score:4, Funny)
The secret of flying is to throw oneself at the ground - and miss.
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Anyone reading /. and not knowing the reference to THHGTTG has to hand in their nerd card and GTFO. For those remaining, providing a reference link is redundant.
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Upon landing (Score:5, Funny)
Upon landing Mr. Baumgartner simply requested a cigar and fresh undies.
Going for the record (Score:5, Funny)
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longest scream in free fall
Clearly this is why he's not actually going into space.
In Space No-One Can hear You Scream.
Although, to be really picky, his scream will be really short. Given that he'll be wearing a fully-enclosed helmet I'd guestimate something approximating a couple of inches.
Not Really Freefall (Physics Lesson) (Score:3, Informative)
Freefall strictly speaking means 9.8m/s/s which, after 228 seconds, multiplies out to 5000mph. That's an order of magnitude more than Baumgartner's speed. Wikipedia explains:
"The example of a falling skydiver who has not yet deployed a parachute is not considered free fall from a physics perspective, since they experience a drag force which equals their weight once they have achieved terminal velocity (see below). However, the term "free fall skydiving" is commonly used to describe this case in everyday speech, and in the skydiving community."
Still, terminal velocity for a human at sea level is about 120mph which is 4.5 times slower than the quoted 536mph. Taking the square root gives an atmospheric pressure 2.1 times less than normal which translates to him popping the 'chute at about 25,000. Actually he had a pressure suit which would probably slow him down so it could have been higher than that.
Re:Not Really Freefall (Physics Lesson) (Score:5, Informative)
We are catching up to the 1960s... (Score:3, Interesting)
On Aug. 16, 1960, US military Col. Kittinger stepped from a balloon-supported gondola at the altitude of 102,800 feet to test the use of a parachute for escape from a space capsule or high-altitude aircraft. In free-fall for 4.5 minutes at speeds up to 614 mph and temperatures as low as -94 degrees Fahrenheit, Col. Kittinger opened his parachute at 18,000 feet.
The jump set records that still stand today: the highest ascent in a balloon, the highest parachute jump, the longest free-fall, and the fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere.
Video of the story [youtube.com]
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One of the 2 favourite things I have about that jump (if I recall, and no I didn't re-watch the video was)
1. he had a hole in his glove but didn't tell anyone because he really wanted to jump and I think it was the last chance or some such.
2. when he lands and the rescue team come to grab him - in one of the videos, his buddy walks up to him says something (there's a voice over) and he flips his pal the bird with a big smile.
What a badass.
We are catching up to the 1960s... (Score:2, Redundant)
On Aug. 16, 1960, US military Col. Kittinger stepped from a balloon-supported gondola at the altitude of 102,800 feet to test the use of a parachute for escape from a space capsule or high-altitude aircraft. In free-fall for 4.5 minutes at speeds up to 614 mph and temperatures as low as -94 degrees Fahrenheit, Col. Kittinger opened his parachute at 18,000 feet.
The jump set records that still stand today: the highest ascent in a balloon, the highest parachute jump, the longest free-fall, and the fastest spee
Opening parachute at 863km/h (Score:2)
Free fall for more than 3 minutes, and reaching a speed of over 800 kilometers per hour that way must be an awesome experience!
I'm wondering one thing though: If you open a parachute while going down at that speed, how does that work? It must be a rather strong parachute. How fast do you decelerate?
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Decompression time? (Score:2)
10 minutes is fast. Did he have to wait extra time to decompress? Or was his suit at ground level pressure from before launch from the ground?
Amazing (Score:2)
Humans will always find new an innovating ways to die. Looking forward to the pending "Destroyed in Seconds" episode on Discovery Channel.
Why do it ? (Score:2)
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Having made more than a few parachute jumps myself, the question of "why" is one I hear often. The best answer I've heard was the one given by one Charles Lindberg [wikipedia.org] on the subject, reprinted below:
"... when I decided that I too must pass through the
experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of
exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts and wires
hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that tenuous hold
of safety and of substance, left me a fe
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According to the article, this jump is still over 6000 feet short of the record of 102,800 feet (31,333 m), which was set in 1960. It seems almost unbelievable that the record has stood for over fifty years.
Still not anywhere near space either. He'll need to go over three times higher before that happens. Balloons won't get you into space anymore than a life jacket can get you airborne.
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Not sure about the shirt - but he's definitely wearing brown pants.