Posted on 02/09/2010 7:56:11 PM PST by Chi-townChief
The Red Bull Stratos team has kept itself under wraps until today’s press conference at the New York Academy of Sciences in NYC. The ambitious project marks the first major attempt at breaking an old but daunting skydiving record, one that starts at the edge of space.
In 1960, U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger stepped out of a capsule at 102,800 feet above the Earth’s surface and, in just minutes returned to the surface by simply falling. The falling part was easy. The surviving part was not—his first jump, from the Excelsior I module nearly ended in disaster when a parachute cord wrapped around his neck. His main chute, attached to a timer, deployed and saved him. In Excelsior III, he failed to report a malfunctioning glove and nearly lost his hand to depressurization. But his record-breaking jump was successful, and having fulfilled its mission, the Air Force stopped jumping from record heights.
His would-be successor is cut from the same mold, but has traveled a far different road. Felix Baumgartner wears two tattoos—one, on his arm that says “Born to Fly” and another on his back, 502, that marks his BASE-jumping code—and has built a career out of from skydiving with frightening regularity and launching himself from architectural landmarks like the Gold Gate Bridge and Taipei 101 with a parachute on his back. He is a daredevil, but according to Kittinger and the rest of the Red Bull Stratos team, he is a calculating one that has survived thousands of skydives by knowing how to prepare and when to back away from a jump.
So then, is this jump a stunt? In a way, it is. This is sponsored by Red Bull, after all, which has associated itself with extreme, entertaining, and daring sporting endeavors for the last decade or so, from the Dakar Rally to snowboard racing.
But with people like Art Thompson, a veteran aerospace engineer who helped develop the B-2 bomber, and Jonathan Clark, a six-time Space Shuttle crew surgeon and advisor to the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, on board to develop the technology and training necessary to perform a jump from 120,000 feet, this attempt likely to mean much more than a stunt for three big reasons:
1) Mach 1. Blackbird SR-71 pilot Bill Weaver was forcibly ejected from his shattered plane at more than Mach 3. His copilot died in the accident. Weaver blacked out, but woke and lived to tell the tale of the only person to have traveled at more than Mach 1 in the Earth’s atmosphere in just a flight suit. Baumgartner, if he succeeds, will be the second, achieving between Mach 1 and 1.2 during his fall. Kittinger didn’t quite achieve Mach 1, owing to his lower jump height. A lot can go wrong. Testing is obviously sparse, so this jump will add valuable data to the potential survival chances for those returning to the ground from space in just a pressurized suit.
2) Data collection and spacesuit design. Because Baumgartner will be traveling in a near vacuum, and because his suit will be filled with nearly pure oxygen, the use of traditional electronics and sensors will be fraught with hazard. According to Thompson, the technology necessary to collect biometric data they are hoping to get necessitated new, innovative solutions. In addition to physiological data, GPS, cameras, and other systems will be operating in Baumgartner’s suit continuously. Suit design is notoriously difficult, and the Red Bull Stratos team needed to heavily redesign the emergency suits already in use by NASA aboard the Space Shuttle. Greater mobility was necessary, but so was the incorporation of highly-aerodynamic drogue parachutes.
3) Commercial sponsorship. If efforts like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are an indication of what’s in store for space travel, then Red Bull Stratos is just another necessary step on the road toward safe space travel for all humans.
Much is still under a blanket. The dates for the jumps haven’t been announced. The locations for the jumps haven’t been revealed. The cost of the project, while assumed to be in the millions, has also been kept top secret.
There’s a good reason why a jump like this hasn’t been attempted very often. A lot could go wrong. Many efforts literally don’t get off the ground. The few successes have occurred with the support of the U.S. Air Force or Russia’s own military might: in 1962, Eugene Andreev jumped from 85,400 feet.
Baumgartner must complete several jumps at steadily escalating heights before attempting the record. Although he is reportedly comfortable in the pressure suit, he has yet to jump from more than 33,000 feet (which was during his flight across the English Channel). Sudden depressurization, unintentional spins, electrical or mechanical malfunctions, and the hazards of aerodynamics around the sound barrier all threaten to snuff out Baumgartner’s attempt.
But, as was evident at today’s announcement, the 40-year-old is confident: he has already earned his pilot’s license, and after his successful jump, which will supposedly take place later this year, he will fight fires from the cockpit of a helicopter. Also dangerous, he admitted, but less risky by far than jumping from space.
Would you skydive from space? Email me at paul.livingstone@advantagemedia.com.
he should be traveling about 1400 mph by the time he gets to 50,000ft.
You may have to pull off a zero... not likely any parachute or human skeleton (not to mention the contents) could survive that sort of instant drag you’d need to make it the last five miles?
Yep, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Obviously there are many ways to do a high altitude jump. The US has been doing this for decades. Mostly for insertion while avoiding radar, that is, detection.
The US has many more ways of doing this now.
Best of luck to everyone involved, but yea, I wouldn’t bet on it.
But hey, that’s just me.
Correct. With no drag, he would be at 50,000 feet in 68.25 seconds at a speed of 1498 MPH. I assume he will use some sort of chute almost from the start. Don’t know if there would be enough atmosphere to keep him subsonic with any practical chute.
It’s got to be a huge rush (assuming survival), and probably would be A) cheaper and B) arguably more fun than Rutan/Branson’s suborbital flight.
Ask Obammy. He’s falling pretty fast.
Well it was kind of a Goofy idea.
Night drop. It is the scariest thing you can ever do in your entire life.
Well, I’ve been falling for about 180 seconds now. I know the Earth must be down there somewhere.
Space starts at 62 miles.
Not really, but you have to be going pretty fast to notice the difference. You have to fly about 50 miles to earn Astronaut wings. X-15 pilots did. But other than those, you had to be "Spam in a Can" to earn those wings , before the advent of the shuttle. Soon you will again.
I guess I am in the minority but this kind of daredevil stunt leaves me very ambivalent. Drawn by the utter terror of the event and at the same time repulsed by the obvious stupidity of the act.
I read something on this a couple weeks ago. His plan is to free fall at super-sonic speeds, and not deploy a chute until 5,000 ft.
He will have a video camera in the balloon to follow from above, and another on his helmet to follow the free fall.
He will be starting out at very cold temperatures like -60 C, and then heat up as he is falling. As the altitude decreases so will his velocity. Kind of a self correcting system. All I can say is good luck with that :-)
"The one thing I would like. I would like to learn how to spell Connecticut. Don't ask me why." -- Small Time Crooks by Woody Allen
120000 feet is 250/11 or 22.72727272... miles
I saw a show on TV featuring a British reporter getting a ride in the U2 up to 70000 feet. It LOOKS a lot like space at that altitude, as the overhead sky gets dark, and the clouds below appear distant. Of course, the plane is still flying, but I would say yes, 120000 feet is at the edge of space.
Makes me think of Mythbusters.
“How about it Adam, do you want to try it?”
“Know I think I’ll let Grant do this one.”
He must be a “ Birther “ ... sarcasm...
Wouldn’t the gradually thickening atmosphere slow him down just as gradually, so that by the time his parachute opened, he wouldn’t have been going the 1498 mph?
Yeah - some guys are just lucky. -sarc off-
About 120 mph but that’s in full atmosphere.
Supposedly about 4-5 min.
NO!!!!
As an Army certified "cherry jumper", I have made my last jump from a perfectly operational airplane. My jumps were made from about 1200 feet. By the time my parachute opened, I had dropped 200-400 feet.
All I recall about those moments was constantly looking around, to make sure none of the other 50 jumpers were going to bump into me. My happiest moment? Walking off the drop zone after my fifth and final jump.
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