Posted on 01/22/2010 11:51:53 AM PST by Reaganesque
Here’s Felix Baumgartner’s plan: Float a balloon to 120,000 feet. Jump out. Break the sound barrier. Don’t die. Simple, right?
If Baumgartner, a world famous base jumper and skydiver, pulls off the feat, he’ll set the record for the world’s highest jump and become the first person to break the sound barrier with his body alone. During the jump, he’ll also collect data on how the human body reacts to a fall from such heights, which could be useful for planning orbital escape plans for future space tourists and astronauts.
Dubbed the Red Bull Stratos and sponsored by the energy drink company, the jump will send Baumgartner to the stratosphere in a small space capsule, lifted by a helium-filled balloon. Once he reaches 120,000 feet after three hours of ascension, ground control will give him the “all clear” sign and he’ll pop open the door and jump, as video cameras on the capsule and his suit record his descent. Within 35 seconds or so, Baumgartner will hit supersonic speeds and break the sound barrier. No one really knows what will happen at that point, but the scientists seem confident that he’ll maintain consciousness. He will free fall for roughly six more minutes, pulling his chute at about 5,000 feet and coasting for 15 minutes back to solid ground.
Just what happens to his body as it goes from subsonic to supersonic and back to subsonic speed is of great interest to scientists, and so he’ll be hooked up to an electrocardiogram monitor during the jump. He’ll also be outfitted with accelerometers and GPS units to confirm his acceleration and speed, and from that the stress on his body. But that’s pretty much it for gear—because he’s wearing a pressurized suit filled with 100 percent oxygen, his crew is rightly wary of putting too many electronics and power sources in his suit that could accidentally set him on fire. Any data they collect will then be made public and turned over to the military and NASA.
The plan is to make the jump sometime in 2010. After they complete test jumps at 25,000, 60,000, and 90,000 feet, they’ll watch the Doppler radar and wait for calm weather and then pick the launch location, which for now they can only say will be somewhere in North America. The goal is to drop Baumgartner near the launch site, but even with low wind conditions he could drift some 150 miles away.
But first they have to test all the gear to make sure that it will work as it transitions from the freezing, no-pressure environment at 120,000 feet to the extreme heat of the dive. It’s the same as with any other flight test program, says Jonathan Clark, the team’s medical director (whose work in high-altitude space jumps we profiled in 2007). “Only in this case, Felix Baumgartner is the aircraft.”
Red Bull as put together this video, putting everything into perspective: Click here to go to page to view video.
So he’s gonna try to drop as fast as Obama’s polls?
Kittinger could still kick his a$$.
"get JerryAldo to cover this, bring a blotter"
This is crap, already done, if I remember correctly it was 140k feet by a guy in the 60’s for the space program. He is acknowleged as the only human to ever break the sound barrior with out a vehical
Guinness Book excludes records set by deities.
USAF Captain Joseph Kittinger I believe holds the record for highest jump at 103,000 feet although he only hit Mach .95 since since a chute opened at 96,000 feet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excelsior
If he fails he may also make one big bounce.
He seems determined not to die of old age.
if failure is the result of this, they will be able to bury him in a chinese food rice carton...that’s about all that will be left.
I think heat during free fall will be the main issue, at least that is the one I would worry about, not only for my body but the chutes also. Would hate to pull the ripcord only to find a charred chute. Very gutsy man, hope he succeeds.
Jump Log entry:
10.5 seconds: "Speed increasing significantly, my bowels just evacuated at the thought of what in the hell have I just done!"
I wonder if he hasn’t had a bit too much Red Bull? Caffeine does weird things to me too.
Oh, he has a chute? Nuts, I thought he was going to land on a wet sponge.
Our first dude in space. I remember reading his account of the jump. He said when he left the capsule he was terrified - because he thought the science guys screwed up their calculations. He didn’t think he was falling - he was so high up he didn’t see the earth rushing toward him. He thought he was going to float there forever. Then he looked up, and saw the capsule racing away into a little dot of nothing, so he knew he was okay. At least so far.
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