Felix Baumgartner Prepares for Supersonic Skydive Attempt in New Mexico 77
Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner has tempted fate with quite a few spectacular skydiving feats; now, he is preparing to be the first man to intentionally exceed the speed of sound by jumping from a balloon instead of staying inside a plane or a rocket. The jump is planned for Tuesday over New Mexico. National Geographic lists some of the various (deadly) things that could go wrong.
Re:Is he really breaking "the speed of sound"? (Score:5, Informative)
He will be going through air, and if you move through air faster than a sound wave would, there are qualitative changes to your aerodynamics.
He will be at "terminal velocity", which means the force of air resistance will equal his own weight.
Considering what happens to the structure of an airplane as it goes transonic, he's taking some interesting chances. Air moving around a body moves at different speeds in different places. When some of it is supersonic and some isn't things are weirder than when you're completely subsonic or completely supersonic.
Re:Is he really breaking "the speed of sound"? (Score:5, Informative)
NG, what happened to you (Score:5, Informative)
It's sad to see that even National Geographic now has to tart up the very real risks of this attempt with dramatic bullshit like the first sentence: "the atmosphere above 12 miles, or 63,000 feet (19,200 meters)—known as the Armstrong line (named for Harry George Armstrong, who founded the U.S. Air Force's Department of Space Medicine in 1947)—is so thin that, if not protected, human blood will literally boil. To prevent that, Baumgartner's airtight suit and the capsule around him will be continuously pressurized to create a personal atmosphere that isolates him from the void surrounding him."
Nonsense. Even if you're in an environment of pure vacuum, your circulatory system is *pressurized*. This is called "blood pressure." Your blood will not boil in space. It will outgas, as dissolved gases in it come out of solution, but that's not boiling; Scuba divers who ascend too rapidly get the bends as N2 leaves solution, but their blood doesn't boil, they don't die. Fluids exposed to atmosphere, like the water on the surface of the eyes and lining the mucous membranes will boil, but not the blood.
"The smallest crack in this protective layer would cause almost immediate death."
Again, why tart this up? The guy who holds the current record and who's helping with this jump, Joe Kittinger? He suffered a "crack" in his "protective layer," in one of his gloves. His hand swelled up like a balloon, and it hurt, and he had some bruising/soft tissue damage, but he continued with the mission and his hand returned to normal size when he descended and healed normally.
Sad to see National Geographic turning into Discover.