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.
My name Jose Emanus
We are going to toss you out of a baloon at ONE HUNDRED AND TWENNNTY FIVE THOOUSSSANND FEET....
Oh I hope not!
Well, if he’s going over the speed of sound and the chute deploys, there’s gonna be nothing but spaghetti shreds all over the area...sumpin’s gotta give, with that rapid deceleration.
This is cool. But I want to see someone BASE jump from the International Space Station!
Yes, it has been done before. And, if you watch the video below the article, you’ll find that they have consulted with the man who did it before. This attempt, however, is from a higher altitude.
AOD’s or Automatic Opening Device is standard equipment for professional divers. I always set mine to 3200 feet.
Well I am sure they will have at least a reserve or two. If the first one has a catastrophic failure he can switch to the reserve. The first attempt should break him more than enough for the reserve to work.
I don’t remember reading about that in my Aerospace Science class in high school AFJROTC. Seems like that would have been mentioned in AS II, which covered human physiology in flight.
I will have to do some personal reading on this.
In the free-fall stage, Joseph Kittinger reached a top speed of 988 km/h (614 mph) or 9/10th’s the speed of sound with tempatures of -71 F.
I hope he pulls it off, but I am feeling a big splat coming up.
Which was the reason the tests were done in the first place... to see how humans reacted in that environment.
They were reported in the media at the time. I was young then and thought that jumping out at 100,000 feet sounded really cool. Today... well, not so much. ;~))
You might be a redneck if... you skydive from 100,000 feet with a Craftsman toolbox on your butt.
I thought the terminal velocity it the lower atmosphere was around 150 mph much below Mach 1. As you fall, the frictional forces (which slow you down) balance the gravitational forces (which accelerate you). I believe until I see something else, he is barking up the wrong tree.IMHO
Project Manhigh.
I hope the sonic boom doesn’t liquefy him.
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