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.
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as an austrian (Score:1)
as an austrian who has been spammed the last year with red bull stratos tv channel ads on the various austrian news sites:
just jump you goddamn corporate whore, i don't care about it or your fucking chemical energy drink.
Re:as an austrian (Score:4, Insightful)
i don't care about it or your fucking chemical energy drink.
Exactly, it's about damn time those anti-innovation corporate whores started selling us NUCLEAR energy drinks!
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What in hell is "chemical" meant to signify there?
It's totally wrong unless he really thinks the contents of a Red Bull can are absolutely pure and uniform.
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It's totally wrong unless he really thinks the contents of a Red Bull can are absolutely pure and uniform.
Being that Red Bull is made from ground up bull penis I too find it hard to believe...
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Perhaps it's an analogue for 'meat' made from the scrapings off the factory floor. Technically it's meat and technically it has a nutritional content but it fsckin well ain't 'hamburger'.
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just jump you goddamn corporate whore, i don't care about it or your fucking chemical energy drink.
I'm also not sure of the point of all this. He's slightly beating records set back in the 60's [wikipedia.org]. Other than "newer stuff" I'm not aware of any new science used for this or any reason why other to sell a caffeine sugar drink. With that said, maybe it's just enough to do better (higher, faster, longer) simliar to land speed records, etc.
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Uh yeah... it's in the article you didn't read. And Kittinger, who hasn't wanted to help anyone beat his record, is on board for this. He's a Stratos team member and the guy that will be talking to him over the radio.
And the point is, precisely as you wrote, to beat those records. If it were primarily to sell drinks, they would have spent the money on TV commercials. Though I'm not surprised they're putting logos on his jump suit to get what little publicity they can out of it.
So he might be the first to
He might be mistaken for a tairst. (Score:2)
Scramble scramble whooosh boom dakkadakkadakka!
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Last I heard it was going to be streamed live.
Re:the way i see it, this can go (Score:4, Funny)
Re:the way i see it, this can go (Score:5, Insightful)
But instead of saying "cut the feed" the anchor should have said "fuck shit fuck" and it'd have been cut. Live snuff film is OK, but no profanity, that might harm the children.
Is he really breaking "the speed of sound"? (Score:2)
He will reach a certain maximum speed on the way down, but the speed of sound is dependent on a number of things [wikipedia.org] and he obviously won't be at sea level in 20 C dry air. Will he be going faster than the speed of sound in water or iron? Where he'll jump from, 99% of the atmosphere is below him and there won't even be a sound or gentle push of air resistance. To my limited knowledge and understanding that is definitely not supersonic.
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.
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That's a very bold claim. Unless you have already done the experiment and crunched the numbers, you cannot know this. It is not some tautological answer derived from definitions... meteors fall into the atmosphere and exceed terminal velocity with great regularity.
Terminal velocity is defined by a steady state balance between the gravitational force and the air resistance. It exists because air resistance varies with velocity, so the faster you go, the higher the resistance. Thus, any overspeed will cau
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... until enough velocity (and momentum) is burned off...
^^^ That's the part I'm waiting for: "burned off" is an interesting way to put that...
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His terminal velocity may decrease as he approaches the ground, but he will never exceed the local terminal velocity at any given altitude.
In general objects fall somewhat faster than their terminal velocity because air density increases as one falls. The earlier poster was right.
Re:Is he really breaking "the speed of sound"? (Score:5, Informative)
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Except if they shoot you out of a cannon horizontally.
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First? Perhaps first this year (Score:2, Interesting)
First man to exceed local speed of sound without a vehicle: Joe Kittinger, 16 August 1960.
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Kittinger jumped from a height of 31km and reached a top speed of 275m/s
I'm looking at the "Guinness Book of Aircraft Facts & Feats" ( published 1984 ) and it says Kittinger hit 714 mph. That's 320 m / s.
Has that claim been adjusted or invalidated since then?
Genuinely curious.
Thanks
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no idea how trustworthy aerospaceweb [aerospaceweb.org] is.
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Could find no mention of ejectee exceeding Mach 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejection_seat [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_barrier [wikipedia.org]. There were ejections post-Yeager (note that Yeager's was first _official_ breaking of sound barrier) that took place at supersonic speeds. Baumgartner is trying to surpass Mach 1 in freefall, which as things stand would be notable.
Not Breaking the Sound Barrier (Score:1)
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He will be going at terminal velocity for that altitude, which is (I guess) faster than the speed of sound at a lower level, but not necessarily faster than sound at where he jumps from.
The information here [redbullstratos.com] suggests that exceeding the local speed of sound is exactly what they're hoping to achieve:
At about 100,000 feet above sea level, Felix Baumgartner will need to accelerate to about 690 miles per hour* to match the speed of sound, known as Mach 1. Then if he continues to accelerate and surpasses the speed of sound, he'll be "supersonic."
* that's the speed of sound at 100,000 feet - at sea level it's closer to 760mph.
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I wish him luck (Score:3)
I've been waiting eleven years for the end of this story. [wired.com]
"Intentionally?" (Score:2)
Has this been done before unintentionally?
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Using helium gas (Score:1)
So, I guess helium gas isn't rare after all? He is, after all, using about 30 million cubic feet of it. Nice use of THAT resource.
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Helium gas is not rare in the sense of the word that we have an aboundance of Helium in our atmosphere. In fact, 5.2 ppm of our atmosphere is Helium, which is comparable for instance to the aboundance of Arsenic in the Earth's crust (5.5 ppm). The problem being, that it takes too much energy to extract the Helium from the atmosphere to be an actual resource.
Capsule? (Score:2)
What happens to the capsule after he jumps out? Obviously the balloon will pop and then it'll be a streamer behind the capsule as it plummets downward. It'd probably be less than optimal to have that land on your house/car/you. Yes -- the odds are against it but where is it supposed to land? Or does it destruct?
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.
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Interesting -- thanks for the great info!
Is the return of the capsule basically identical to how Baumgartner comes back? So the same basic landing zone?
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That I cannot say. I would think it would be in the same general area if the flight train is cut soon after Baumgartner jumps. They Probably wait until he is landed before cutting, as they can than monitor the decent from the gondola as well (with cameras, or other measuring equipment).
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.
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without commerce, there is no science
without science, there is no commerce
learn to be a little more comfortable with the interplay between the two
you may now spit on me from your ivory tower for even suggesting this (rolls eyes)
science cannot be debased, because science is not some fundamentalist religion
there is absolutely nothing wrong with the circus atmosphere, as the this entire event is indeed a circus
of course the wording is not 100% scientifically accurate. this is not lies and falsehoods like with
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Me personally, I'm fine with dramatic language to describe the event. But dramatic license, i.e. falsehoods? Give me a fucking break.
Every single time I've read a debunking of some false, seemingly true, scientific "fact" I used to believe; the truth turned out to be far more interesting. Any science writer who can't convey this to his or her audience should be looking for another job.
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you want science journalists to magically impart college level science knowledge to their audience in 10 minutes time? you expect the impossible
in real life you cut corners and dumb things down to preserve interest and excitement, and that's fine. if the person is more interested, they will learn the real truths, just as you describe your own experience. furthermore, if that excitement and interest wasn't preserved by dumbing things down, maybe less people would be interested enough to make the journey to b
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Even that process is extremely slow. Here's an experience I've had that demonstrates this pretty clearly. Wet the inside of a vacuum flask (i.e., one reinforced with some kind of rubber or plastic so that it doesn't implode hazardously when you evacuate it). Pour out all the water, but leave droplets all over the inside surface. Pump on it with a vacuum pump. It takes *hours*
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Did you keep those droplets warmed to 37C? Baumgartner's skin will probably be a lot colder than that, but membranes in his mouth and throat will be kept pretty close to internal body temperature.
Re:NG, what happened to you (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed, reading this kind of nonsense makes my blood boil.
Wait, what?
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Too lazy to look up the numbers but I think that the terminal velocity of human body in a free fall is pretty close to the speed of sound, like 4/5ths, even at lower altitudes. At high altitude this will be higher because of less drag which will also be affected by the jumper positioning his body in a way to minimize drag. So it is possible, I guess.
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Complete nonsense. Terminal velocity of a skydiver who is assuming the customary body orientation, in the lower atmosphere, is 54 m/s (121 mph - mach 0.16). If his orientation is changed to minimum drag, either through inexperience, loss of consciousness, or deliberately, terminal velocity can reach as much as 90 m/s or more, but this is still under mach 0.3.
Of course there is some variation with body weight and type, but most skydivers are pretty physically fit.
As you point out, and as is obvious, terminal
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"Most skydivers are pretty physically fit"
You've not visited my dropzone then, and obviously don't know me!
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Terminal velocity is a product of the gravitational acceleration versus the air resistance. The resistance is dependant on the density of the atmosphere and is much less at the 100,000 feet point where he will try and hit the speed of sound. As he comes lower, the increasing density will slow him down to the terminal velocity at that altitude.
There actually a difference in terminal velocity between ground level and the 10,000 feet that routine skydiving happens from, about 2% per 1000 feet.
Supersonic ejection from F15 (Score:2)
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However this is referring to the rapid change from no wind to 800 mph (the pilot's estimate if I heard correctly) of wind smashing his entire body. Pretty sure Felix wont be feeling this. But interesting story nonetheless.