Felix Baumgartner's Supersonic Skydive Attempt 271
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.
Redbull (Score:5, Funny)
Has identified the limits of server capacity.
Re:Redbull (Score:5, Informative)
Before the server dies, here is the direct youtube link to the live feed - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIxH6DToXQ [youtube.com]
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At the moment, he's at 127,692 ft, higher than what was planned. When he was asked if he was ready to do the pre-jump check list, he didn't respond for a number of minutes and had to be asked by Joe K; a number of times.
I wonder if there was something wrong, or just nerves, or too much 02.
It looks like everything is ok now.
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Press conference just started at 1:30 PST - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIxH6DToXQ [youtube.com] . Just in case anyone is still following.
Re:Redbull (Score:5, Informative)
I'm certified as an Enriched Air diver and you are a bit confused. It's the partial pressure of Oxygen that will kill you. The safe limit we dive to is 1.6 atm partial pressure of O2. This means that you could breath pure O2 in about 20 ft of water. Below that it's toxic.
In spacesuits they breath pure O2 at about 3-4 psi. The reason is if you put in other gases your mixed gas pressure will be too high and you can't move in a flexible suit. If you go too low you are in trouble too.
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The Pilot during the simulated checklist sounded stressed -- worried about something; the operator at the control center has a little bit of unfocused goofiness.
Hopefully all goes well and this isn't an indication of anything serious.
Re:Redbull (Score:5, Informative)
the operator at the control center has a little bit of unfocused goofiness.
You mean Joe Kittenger [wikipedia.org], the man who holds the existing record, the man Felix trusts implicitly, and possesses the only voice that Felix wants to hear in his capsule?
When you are old enough to need bifocals, you'll appreciate the difference between "unfocused goofiness" and just trying to see.
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the operator at the control center has a little bit of unfocused goofiness.
You mean Joe Kittenger [wikipedia.org], the man who holds the existing record, the man Felix trusts implicitly, and possesses the only voice that Felix wants to hear in his capsule?
When you are old enough to need bifocals, you'll appreciate the difference between "unfocused goofiness" and just trying to see.
Thanks for the clarification on the cause of his demeanor -- it wasn't meant to be an insult. In either case, it's comforting to know the observation was valid and not my imagination. Wearing trifocals myself, I can understand the problem -- especially when going back and forth between two or more glasses prior to the bifocal-trifocal solutions. I would occasionally hate myself for how unprofessional it looked to others while they waited for me to make my changes.
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My experience has been to have it occasionally slow the decision making process. However, Kittinger's experience should be able to counter that problem.
Re:Redbull (Score:5, Insightful)
Something was still off between those two on communications. I think Joe was trying to put him at ease, probably had direct view of his heart rate and other things we couldn't see. But I think Felix was having a fight or flight moment. I actually worried something with his suit pressure was wrong because he was acting like he had nitrogen narcosis ( or the equivalent at opposite extremes of pressure). He was slow to respond, and sometimes didn't respond or acknowledge at all. I can't help to think if this was a NASA or military exercise, they would have stopped the egress checklist and switched to a "is our pilot ok" checklist. It was painful to watch.
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No mod points. I concur completely.
Re:Redbull (Score:5, Interesting)
He was also in a pressure suit the severely limited his motion. Maybe he was just too busy to talk, trying to figure out how to get certain things done.
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Did you watch?
I'm quite convinced something wasn't right. It was not an isolated incident - more often than not Felix did not respond or did not seem to understand what was required of him. It took several attempts to start the egress checklist and I'm not convinced he secured the door (even though he confirmed it).
Also, he didn't confirm turning on the vest/helmet cameras and no shots from those were broadcast at all. Weren't they supposed to?
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He did not have full video downlink from the cameras on his suit, only on the capsule. Either they didn't want the extra weight of a downlink, battery and antenna system or they didn't want footage of spins etc going live. I suspect the former since weight would be an issue with a jump like this. We should see that footage in the director's cut.
Re:Redbull (Score:5, Funny)
When he was asked to confrim that his pressure suite is inflating he just sat there and didn't respond (nothing to do apparently). Kittinger asked repeatedly and only then after some secondes (20, 30?) he got an answer.
Briefly time became two dimensional.
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the operator at the control center has a little bit of unfocused goofiness.
I don't give much for the "control center"... If you look at the youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIxH6DToXQ) (7 hours 53 minutes long), at 4:52:12, they will state the following:
Altitude: 127861 ft/ 38972 meters
Temperature outside: 19.1F / -6.1C
Wtf?...
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the temp was likely correct. the temp decreases with altitude only until you reach the tropopause. after that you are in the stratosphere and temperature rises with altitude. this jump was well above the tropopause.
Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally! (Score:5, Funny)
FINALLY... A Slashdot posting that doesn't appear AFTER the event! :-)
Re:Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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It would put him in the Indian Ocean, southern hemisphere, roughly at -34.45221847282653, 75.2783203125
Re:Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally (Score:5, Funny)
... roughly at -34.45221847282653, 75.2783203125
That's roughly? Are you a Vulcan, or positronic?
Re:Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally (Score:5, Funny)
"roughly" modified HOW it would place him, not the where.
--Live long and avoid inefficiency.
Re:Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally (Score:5, Funny)
Get back in your kangaroo and piss off. No one cares about your pedantry.
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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?"
Re:Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally (Score:5, Informative)
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.....
Video feed? (Score:2)
Am I the only person for whom the video feed is broken?
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Am I the only person for whom the video feed is broken?
That's just the dust cloud from his impact. It should clear up in a minute or two.
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Yes. You must have missed the part where he was abducted by aliens.
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As of now, 69,400 ft and still rising (Score:2)
and soon falling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MrIxH6DToXQ# [youtube.com]!
As of now
69,400 ft
Be patient (Score:5, Funny)
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Hah, I couldn't blame him. ;)
For anyone who missed the live stream, here is the video of the jump.
http://youtu.be/g4nJF9JFleI [youtu.be]
Yeah, no kidding...going up higher than anyone has ever gone in a balloon, past the maximum height of any plane...and then opening this huge hatch in front of you to look outside into an environment with .03 PSI where you can actually see the curvature of the Earth a bit.
And THEN, to climb OUT THAT HOLE and stand on a step the size of a skateboard, holding onto two handrails...and then just jump. Absolutely incredible.
Hydrogen? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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Are you high or something? Or is scientific stuff only the stuff you approve of?
Re:Hydrogen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you high or something? Or is scientific stuff only the stuff you approve of?
Well, I'm more interested in the medical usage - about six months ago, my dad had to reschedule an MRI, the imaging center said that there was a shortage of helium needed to run the unit. He had a non-critical need for his MRI so rescheduling was not a problem, but I have to think that the 30 million cubic feet of helium that they are venting to the atmosphere in this thrill ride would keep a lot of MRI machines running.
http://www.fiercemedicalimaging.com/story/helium-shortage-threatens-access-mri-services/2012-09-23 [fiercemedicalimaging.com]
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Except that medical grade helium and the crap they fill party balloons with are two different things.
I thought all helium came out of the ground, captured from natural gas wells. There may be some grades that are more refined than other, but the ultimate source is the same - and is very limited.
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Here's a Slashdot citation to support you: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/23/0518247/scientists-speak-out-against-wasting-helium-in-balloons [slashdot.org]
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Some helium is pure enough to put in medical equipment and some is pure enough to put in party balloons. Make a guess what's in the balloon?
But all helium is able to be purified to any degree -- just because they can allow more impurities in helium meant for balloons doesn't mean that the same helium couldn't be used in an MRI machine if it were purified further. It all (mostly) comes from the same source, the only difference is in how much they purify it.
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It costs money to purify helium to greater degree and it costs money to store and transport such helium. Thus, it is possible to run out of medical grade helium without actually running out of helium.
I don't see how that's possible. Any helium can be purified, so if you have a truckload of "dirty" helium, you can purify it and use it for medical uses. But if you run out of helium, you have no helium for any use.
Re:Hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
Except that medical grade helium and the crap they fill party balloons with are two different things.
Helium is an element. It won't break down, and actually due to being helium it won't even form compounds. The only problem is that it leaks into space, never to return.
If helium is mixed up with other elements you can purify it. Compared to purifying gold ore it's probably child's play.
The line about balloon helium being somehow different from important helium is actually the standard line of the balloon manufacturers. But it makes no scientific sense, so don't listen to it.
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. That's news to me. I would have thought they'd just have argued that they're just following market rules - and they'd have a point.
Re:Hydrogen? (Score:4, Informative)
Except that medical grade helium and the crap they fill party balloons with are two different things.
No, they're the same thing subjected to different degrees of refinement. Everything from balloon helium to the highest-grade purified lab helium come from the same limited sources.
The volume of the Red Bull Stratos balloon is close to a cubic kilometre. Factoring in the practice jumps and aborted launches, I'd estimate that this project could easily be accounting for over 3% of US helium consumption this year.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask why hydrogen is not a viable alternative. There are probably some good, valid answers to that question, but I don't think that yours is one of them. And we do need a longer, louder discussion of how helium usage should be prioritized: it's neither renewable nor (in many applications) substitutable.
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Oops, please ignore my embarrassing "cubic kilometre" miscalculation... it's about 850,000 cubic metres which of course is nowhere near. However (unless my brain's really malfunctioning today) I think I got the proportion of US usage right -- it was about 56 million cubic metres last year.
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Your figures are still way off. 180,000 cubic feet / 5,097 cubic meters is the spec for how much helium they're using, the 850,000 cubic meters is the volume at full altitude and minimal atmospheric pressure.
Re:Hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
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History and the modern world are fraught with examples of people wasting resources without adequate planning for the future. Deferring to market-think doesn't make that problem go away. Overconfidence in the market is what causes or exacerbates a high percentage of our problems.
Even if it WERE true that the market would probably respond to a helium shortage by supplying additional quantities, that doesn't change the fact that one asshole, who wants glory badly enough and who has enough power and resource
Re:Hydrogen? (Score:4, Informative)
Why don't they use Hydrogen for things like this
Aside from the obvious hair shirt trolling, you can talk to the ham radio guys who launch balloons with radio repeaters slung underneath them.
You'd superficially think the very slightly lower weight of H2 would make H2 lift more than He, but after all manner of handwaving it turns out that very cold low pressure helium displaces more air at altitude. So 100 Liters of H2 and He at STP, hauled up 100Kft, supposedly that results in a slightly higher volume of He than H2. I honestly don't care enough to research it, but urban legend or no its an entertaining story. And you're not solving it with ideal gas laws (need non-ideal gas laws/tables)
Because H2 comes from natgas and He comes from natgas the obvious next calculation is if the larger balloon outweighs (get it?) the advantage of cheaper filling.
You could probably create a whole low level undergrad or maybe AP high school science lab out of determining if the first claim is true or made up and secondly which would overall as a system be cheaper aka less damaging to the environment.
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You'd superficially think the very slightly lower weight of H2 would make H2 lift more than He, but after all manner of handwaving it turns out that very cold low pressure helium displaces more air at altitude.
The density of H2 is about half that of He, though in air the buoyancy difference is around 8%.
So 100 Liters of H2 and He at STP, hauled up 100Kft, supposedly that results in a slightly higher volume of He than H2. I honestly don't care enough to research it, but urban legend or no its an entertaining story. And you're not solving it with ideal gas laws (need non-ideal gas laws/tables)
Do you have a reference for this? In school, we were taught that the ideal gas law works best at high temperatures and low pressures, even at -30C (240K), far from the boiling point of Hydrogen and Helium, it seems that the low pressure at high altitude would still enable the ideal gas law to provide a good approximation of the behavior of the gases.
Because H2 comes from natgas and He comes from natgas the obvious next calculation is if the larger balloon outweighs (get it?) the advantage of cheaper filling.
Since many sources are claiming that Helium is sold below its tru
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I agree. It's a waste of a precious resource. Scientists have rung the alarm bell already on that one.
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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)?
What's wrong with this usage of helium? And if helium were truly scarce, those scientific and medical uses would be recycling their helium.
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Helium is not scarce yet. But it soon will be; 75% of all Helium comes from a handful of gas wells in the US, where the helium content in natural gas is the highest. These are expected to pretty much run out in a decade or so.
Until that happens, helium recycling isn't really economically profitable. That's why. Nevertheless, some recycling initiatives are going on.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/University+Alberta+looks+become+leader+helium+recycling/6937916/story.html [edmontonjournal.com]
Youtube link to the live feed (Score:3)
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 [youtube.com]
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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 le
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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 could see fog forming inside the helmet with each breath
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Egress checklist... (Score:3)
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.
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I get the sense he didn't have the level of discipline with regards to the checklist procedure as say a military trained pilot or astronaut. He became silent, uncommunicative, and did things out of order. I get the sense this was just a really really tall BASE jump for him. I kept waiting for him to jump out with a hose still attached, because he kept putting the vent hose back in after the checklist told him to remove it.
And he just landed (Score:3)
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.
For an official record ... (Score:5, Funny)
For it to be an official record, doesn't he need to do it twice, once in each direction?
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Re:For an official record ... (Score:4, Funny)
Jumping on the opposite side of Earth would make him fall in the other direction.
I've misread it as... (Score:2)
"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.
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Spin (Score:3)
Kittinger gets to keep at least one record (Score:2)
Some Official Stats (Imperial) (Score:3)
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
Just in via BBC - 833.9MPH! (Score:3)
"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.
Re:ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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ALL: The Greater Good.
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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
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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.
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The capsule is made from polycarbonates, not from metal. Thus it is just bright, not shiny.
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Re:Famous last word (Score:5, Funny)
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Speed_of_sound 1,236 km/h (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Speed_of_sound 1,236 km/h (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Speed_of_sound 1,236 km/h (Score:4, Informative)
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How much Helium was used?
One balloon full!
Re:Major FAIL on marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
When he landed they should have given him a "Red Bull" rather than a bottle of water.
Concern for his well being should supersede marketing concerns. So I call that a major WIN.
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When he landed they should have given him a "Red Bull" rather than a bottle of water.
I think he was probably so hopped up on adrenaline after landing that if they gave him a Red Bull he would have detonated like a water balloon filled with ketchup.
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