Red Bull Stratos-Space Jump

Funny I was just reading about this jump and scientific objectives. I think I hope it happens on Thursday.

This has been done before. Joe Kittinger broke the sound barrier in free fall on Aug. 16, 1960 jumping from a height of 102,800 feet. It was part of the testing for high altitude bail outs in the early days of the space program. I've seen some of the old footage. It's a wicked looking jump where he just bails out head first. And they thought Yeager had balls.

Coolest thing ever (except for Kittinger's fall)

Edit;
Sorry, I did not view the video of Kittinger before calling Baugartner's feat the coolest. I used to think Aron Ralston, the guy, who cut off his arm after being pinned under a rock, the baddest dude walking the earth. Kittinger moved to the top of my list.

TX Wind wrote: This has been done before. Joe Kittinger broke the sound barrier in free fall on Aug. 16, 1960 jumping from a height of 102,800 feet. It was part of the testing for high altitude bail outs in the early days of the space program. I've seen some of the old footage. It's a wicked looking jump where he just bails out head first. And they thought Yeager had balls.

Kittinger did jump from 102,800' but did not break the sound barrier. I think he got up about 615mph, but with the atmosphere, supersonic was not possible. But you would think, in 1960, with the technology they had at that time, I'm surmising that those big brass balls of Kittinger fell to earth rather quickly in that glorified snowmobile suit.

Some sites say Kittinger did go super sonic reaching 702 but 615 sounds more accurate. At that altitude the speed of sound is only around 660 mph on a standard day. Mach numbers change with atmospheric conditions. The higher the altitude the slower the speed of sound. High performance aircraft use mach number because the aerodynamics change when the sound barrier is broken. It's also important to know when they are entering the Mach buffer. From about .97 to 1.02 the control surfaces go through buffeting and feel unstable because of disturbance from the sound pressure cone. I can only imagine what it must feel like to go through mach buffer without any vehicle around you.

We do have balls going 45 on our bare feet. Some things are just plain insanity though.

This is an updated video of what happened Tuesday to delay the launch. As of right now, they are shooting for Sunday morning.

Red Bull Stratos update

From what I've read, he has no aerodynamics while he accelerates to mach speed. It is important for him to get into position right off the porch, because he has no way to manipulate his body as in a regular jump. The other interesting aspect is that as he enters more of earth's atmosphere, it will decelerate him slowly, if you call 700 to 200mph in a couple of minutes slowly.   

Did anyone see this Kittinger jump video? He gets out of his suit, and lights up a smoke. One Bad Motha!

Kittinger Jump

Felix Baumgartner launched at 11:25 EDT this morning and is at 60,000 feet at the moment. Its being televised live on the Discovery channel. He has some kind of a failure in his faceplate heating system at the moment and his visor is beginning to fog up on him. Its also up on youtube as a live feed.

AWESOME!!!
Highest manned balloon flight
Highest skydive
Fastest freefall
But freefall duration still belongs to Kittinger

Congrats Felix (and team)

Careful Chris, you will get a Joe lecture on injecting politics into non-political threads. Well, at least I would. Cool Achievement on the jump.

Yep, Officially jumped from 128097 feet, reached 833 mph (mach 1.24)about 1 minute into the freefall.

Looking down from that height, standing on something the size of a skateboard I don't think I would be hearing much coming over the radio either. Probably couldn't pry my hands off those railings with dynomite.