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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
First? Perhaps first this year (Score:2, Interesting)
First man to exceed local speed of sound without a vehicle: Joe Kittinger, 16 August 1960.
Re:Capsule? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like with most balloon payload, the flight train will separate from the balloon. The parachute will open and the gondola (or capsule) will decent at a reasonable speed. Most likely be reused immediately afterwards.
Balloon flights like these cannot be done anywhere. There are reasons for that. Although it comes down relatively slowly (something around 10 m/s I guess from similar payloads), it can still cause damage. Also, you have a 2 football sized (sorry for the journalistic dimensions) balloon coming down... I wouldn't want to be stuck under that.
The nice thing is that once the flight train is separated, the impact points of both balloon and gondola are very predictable. Much more than the actual balloon flight itself. Decent is fast, and only little affected by winds at altitude.
Balloon flights like these (actually not at all like these, but from the balloon type, payload, etc.) are done all the time. Sometimes during stratospheric research campaigns by the dozen. But launches and landings almost always happen in remote desolated areas such as New Mexico, where you can be fairly sure there is nothing but dust in the probable impact zone.