Skydiver Leaps From 18 Miles Up In 'Space Jump' Practice

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."

Pretty Cool

[jomama717]

Makes me wish I'd been alive to watch live coverage of people LANDING ON THE FREAKING MOON.

Re:air resistance

[aapold]

Kittinger's story is amazing. He used to call into a florida talk show I listened to when I lived there from time to time to talk about some of the stuff involved with his jump. He is consulting on this attempt, so while this attempt might seem a stunt, at least Kittinger is apparently getting paid for it.

Re:air resistance

[tragedy]

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.

Re:Pretty Cool

[camperdave]

If NASA took all the trouble to fake the moon landing, then why haven't they, in the past 40 years, faked another milestone, like landing on Mars?

Re:New Extreme Sport

[bill_mcgonigle]

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:In Space ...

[tragedy]

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.

Re:Who ever needs to land a spacecraft now

[Fnord666]

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.