Felix Baumgartner

[Мастер]

will attempt to skydive from 120,000 ft (36,576 metres) on Tuesday in New Mexico. This is over 1/3 of the altitude at which one becomes an astronaut, and he is expected to break the sound barrier within about 30 seconds. The attempt was originally scheduled for Monday, but his extremely light-weight and fragile balloon cannot take off in the heavy winds which are in the forecast for Monday.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... ds-newsxml

Pyotr Dolgov, Hero of the Soviet Union, was killed jumping from 28,640 metres in 1962, testing an experimental pressure suit. The suit did not pass the test. Joseph Kittinger, a member of Baumgartner's team, had already jumped from 31,300 metres in 1960, and subsequently went on to spend 11 months in the Hanoi Hilton.

[Arneb]

Watching the event live via Streaming here.

In case anyone wonders about the accents, the moderator and the haggard guy beside him are Austrians, the guy on the left is a German ex-Shuttle astronaut. Austrian sounds fuuny doesn't it? :D

[Arneb]

The attempt has been called off because of winds above the airfield. Possible new attempt on Thursday.

[Мастер]

OK, so Felix gets to live another two days.

[Lianachan]

Heard this exchange on the radio yesterday. They were talking to a stuntman about the skydive. Italics are paraphrased, rest is word for word.

BBC Man: It’s very dangerous.
Stuntman: Well no, not really because of all the safeguards, etc..
BBC Man: But there’s a chance he could die.
Stuntman: I think you’ll find that ten out of ten people will die.
BBC Man: Well yes, but that’s usually at the end of their lives.

The BBC at its insightful best.

[Мастер]

The BBC at its insightful best.

Can't argue with anything they said there :P

[Мастер]

So they are claiming they'll be ready to go in about 90 minutes.

[Arneb]

IF this is real (Ireserve judgement - after all, they claim to be taking off from Roswell ), Baumgartner is currently at about 16,000 m.

Well. It's probably all photoshopped anyway.

[Мастер]

Crikey, they're well above the targeted altitude.

[Мастер]

Looks like he did it.

[Arneb]

Touchdown. From 39 km. Did you see that tumble before he stabilized himself?

Aweseome.

[Мастер]

Touchdown. From 39 km. Did you see that tumble before he stabilized himself?

Yep! Looks like that only developed as the atmosphere thickened, when he left the capsule, he was pretty stable.

Aweseome.

Indeed! Didn't break the free-fall record, though, so he needs to do another one :P

[Arneb]

Didn't break the free-fall record, though, so he needs to do another one :P

He said later that this was on purpose, and that he wanted to leave one record to Jpe kittinger - He released the chute at about 3300 m, after 4:16 min; the plan had been to free-fall down to 1500 m - that would have given him the fourth record as well.

[Enzo]

OK< I have not read up on him yet, but I heard it going down - so to speak - on the radio. And believe me, radio coverage of a visual event is simply stunning.

SO they said he hit 800+ miles per hour and broke the sound barrier.

Fair enough. I know what speed of sound is down here on earth, but what ranges does it have up at 100,000 feet or whatever? I wonder, did he break the speed of sound on earth while up there, or did he break the speed of sound up there, while up there?

And if he broke the sound barrier, did he create a sonic boom? And did anyone hear it if he did? Or is this one of those tree falls in the forest with no one around type of things?

[Blue Monster 65]

That was pretty cool.

[Мастер]

Enzo - this site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_s ... _acoustics

has some information about the speed of sound at different altitudes. Not sure about the sonic boom questions . . .

[Arneb]

Enzo, I found some answers while reading about the event.

Speed of sound is about 1100 km/h at the altitude concerned. Baumgartner broke that easily, as he would have broken the speed of sound at ground level (about 1234 km/h) - although at the air density encountered at ground level, his terminal velocity would hve been far, far slower, at 400 km/h

He couldn't hear the sonic boom - after all, he was travelling faster than sound.

Neither could anyone else, as they were too far away. Sound doesn't carry very well in thin air, as we all know (Noone can hear you scream...). Someone dangerously close to a mass of 150 kg slamming through the air at that speed would have heard the boom. Luckily, noone was around to risk a collision.

[Enzo]

No, I didn't think HE would hear it, but I have no idea how far a sonic boom propagates. Nor did I know how close to the ground he came before losing supersonic velocity. First time I heard a sonic boom was in western Colorado about 1975. I don;t know what made it, but it was darn loud and resounded off the mesas.

[Arneb]

Nor did I know how close to the ground he came before losing supersonic velocity.

that's something I was wondering about also. From the footage it appears that he entered into his flat spin when he was already decelerating out of the supersonic phase. So he was probably supersonic at, say 20 - 25 km up.

First time I heard a sonic boom was in western Colorado about 1975. I don;t know what made it, but it was darn loud and resounded off the mesas.

Oh, I heard mine maybe a few years earlier. The damned commies used to love flying over West Berlin with supersonic velocities whenever there was a minor disturbance in East-West relations. IOW, quite often. IIRC, that stopped sometime in the 70s.

[Мастер]

The damned commies used to love flying over West Berlin with supersonic velocities whenever there was a minor disturbance in East-West relations. IOW, quite often. IIRC, that stopped sometime in the 70s.

Was this an action permitted under the occupation agreement, or were they being innovative?

I know the Americans very non-subtly reinforced the right of the four parties to have unrestricted access to any part of Berlin, shortly after the wall went up. I'm not sure whether that applied to airspace as well . . .

[Arneb]

Difficult. I am quite certain the Russians were perfectly within their rights to fly where they did fly. They wouldn't have risked a confrontation involving fighter planes just to cause a nuisance.

After allflying in the diretion of Berlin at full tilt and then just missing it by a scratch would do the job, as long as they didn't enter one of the three corridors reserved for Berlin-bound air traffic

[Heid the Ba]

Offhand I can't remember the details but there were various treaties which allowed NATO and WarPact Forces to observe each other's manouvers. In theory each had free reign to roam anywhere, in practice they were closely followed and monitored. I used to work with a guy who had been in the BAOR and involved in this who had turned up at the border in a (still prototype) V8 Range Rover and had lead the East Germans such a dance that they had to shadow them with helicopters as they had nothing else that could keep up. Then the East Germans took to crashing large transport vehicles into the Range Rovers so an equilibrium was restored.

[tubeswell]

That was pretty cool.

Yep. Its like being in the '50s or the '60s all over again. Before virtual stuff.