
Cool!
This is excellent. I wish him every success.
Vic.
Skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped 128,000 feet (24 miles, 39km) out of a balloon today, to complete the highest skydive in history. It took just under 10 minutes for the Austrian to reach the desert surface below. The Red Bull Stratos space capsule finally got off the ground at Roswell, New Mexico, following two aborts on the …
Yes Congrats all around. Wow still check out the story the author alludes to with the SR71 in the 1960's. Amazing stuff was going on in the AF and with NASA at this time and its cool to see even a small piece recreated today. Amazing story of survival.
http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/weaver_sr71_bailout.html
The daredevil will break the sound barrier at 1,110 km/h (690mph) during his descent
This is the speed of sound at 0C. It varies with temperature and therefore altitude:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound
#Altitude_variation_and_implications_for_atmospheric_acoustics
So by "sound barrier" do you mean journalese sloppiness like "the FT index broke the 6000 barrier" or do you actually mean that he will encounter the aeronautic effects of passing through the air that surrounds him faster than sound does?
There is a table of the speed of sound at various altitudes here http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere/q0112.shtml
That table suggest that the if they are expecting to break the speed of sound while it's 690 mph they will have to do it in the first few thousand feet and that he really will be passing through the air surrounding him faster than sound.
There is something not quite right though. In rough numbers 690 mph is 300 m/s. It has to take him a minimum of 30 seconds to get to that speed by which time he has fallen 0.5 * 10 * 30^2 = 4500m = 13,500 ft. Add a bit for drag and my rounding and he'll be breaking the local sound barrier at 100,000ft or so, where it's only 675 mph.
I suspect the difference comes down to the difference between the actual atmosphere on the day he's jumping and the simplified model used by aerospaceweb.org
This is no criticism of the OP but the analogy is inappropriate.
Having working in finance for 20+ years I can safely say that psychological support/resistance levels/barriers are confined to the realms of the imagination and the financial press. They are not taken seriously by practitioners in the financial markets and those who speak of them show their lack of understanding about financial markets work.
The reason for asking this question was that I thought that the speed of sound would vary a lot with height. However, the table that Chris 48 helpfully linked shows that it is greatest (340m/s) at ground level, decreases or increases with height in the various layers of the atmosphere and is least (274m/s) at 90km.
psychological support/resistance levels/barriers are confined to the realms of the imagination and the financial press
That's exactly what I meant. Numbers ending in 000 are not barriers.
Equally, the speed of sound at ground level is not relevant to someone a long way up.
However, we have established that he broke the sound barrier, even though it is not clear at what altitude or speed this was. It will be interesting to discover whether this had any physiological effect when the data have been studied.
"So by "sound barrier" do you mean journalese sloppiness like "the FT index broke the 6000 barrier" or do you actually mean that he will encounter the aeronautic effects of passing through the air that surrounds him faster than sound does?"
Everyone else outside academia (real world) prefers the sloppy version.
Not sure about standards soviets, but certainly El. Reg's journos can't be reading the results of their own poll from last week which was resoundingly in favour of stories being in S.I only with the possible exception of pints for beer and ft. for aircraft altitude.
I don't think this story would have counted as having anything to do with "aircraft altitude" in the normal sense of the phrase, and it's certainly not about beer. So the readers' poll seem to have requested it be reported in metric only then.
Fine by me - much easier to read that way.
Space. Space. Wanna go to space. Better buy a telescope. Wanna see me. Buy a telescope. Gonna be in space. Are we in space yet? What’s the hold-up? Gotta go to space. Gotta go to SPACE. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! I’m in space! Wanna go to earth wanna go to earth wanna go to earth wanna go to earth. Wanna go to earth. Wanna go home. It’s too big. Too big. Wanna go home. Wanna go to earth.
Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Okay okay, calm down calm down get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? Its a sort of tingling in my... well I suppose I better start finding names for things. Lets call it a... tail! Yeah! Tail! And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do. Yeah, this is really exciting. I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now isn't it? And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello, Ground!
> was scary watching during those check-lists.
He seemed to be struggling to focus. I wonder if there was enough oxygen in the capsule - my in-my-head calculations during the ascent gave a ppO2 of about 0.14, and that's hypoxia territory. Baumgartner seemed to be exhibiting symptoms diuring the checks.
Cracking flight, though. I hope I'll get the opportunity to buy him a beer sometime :-)
Vic.
> Suit is pressurised to 3.5psi with 100% O2. So ppO2 =0.24 atm
Yes, but was he on the suit breathing system for the ascent?
I noticed when he jumped that they counted down his breathing gas from 10 minutes; that would appear to have been some brinksmanship if he went for 2.5 hours of ascent on the supply, then jumped when it had 10 mins left...
The capsule also measure FO2, and it was higher than normoxic (26%-ish, IIRC). Again, this would be an odd thing to set up if he were doing the ascent on the suit system.
And one of the checklist items was to check the visor seal. This would make no sense if he were already on a closed, internal system.
From the above, I surmise that he performed the ascent on the gas in the capsule, and then qswitched to his suit breathing system just prior to opening the door. And that's why I wondered about the capsule ppO2...
Vic.
The capsule apparently has it's own supply at 8psi as you said and is replenished with LNO2 tanks.
8psi of 100% O2 is ok for a 3.5 hour trip.
My guess is that capsule would start off with air and then vent as it rose until it reached 8psi then continually flow O2 and vent to keep it at 8psi - that way you don't need any CO2 scrubbers and you can gradually off gas the N2 to prevent decompression sickness.
Interestingly the parachute has a way of automatically cutting off the backup - if it deployed accidentally it would slow his descent so much he would run out of suit O2 before he got low enough to breath.
> is replenished with LNO2 tanks.
LNO2? I doubt Nitrous would do much good. But an O2 tank would be easy to strap to the capsule - particularly if it's closed-circuit.
> 8psi of 100% O2 is ok for a 3.5 hour trip.
But that's not what he had if he was breathing the capsule atmosphere; the graphics showed around 8psi at around 26%, IIRC.So rather than having a ppO2 of about 0.54, he would have had a ppO2 of about 0.14. The former would be fine...
> that way you don't need any CO2 scrubbers
Given the rate of expansion of the capsule air - especially at altitude - you're not going to vent much CO2 that way. I, for one, wouldn't risk the problems of hypercapnia for the cost of a scrubber and a loop pump...
> you can gradually off gas the N2 to prevent decompression sickness.
If DCS is a real risk - I haven't done the calculations - it would be much easier to off-gas before the flight.
Vic.
Longest free fall. (although he used a small drogue chute right from the start of his jump). And it's taken quite a while to break his other records.
Highest balloon ride, highest parachute jump and highest speed go to Felix 'Titanium Cojones' Baumgartner
Normally I'd say folks who do crazy stuff just to get in the record books are fools, HOWEVER, this guy had a ton of preparation, experience, and purpose behind it. The capsule and cameras recorded all sorts of data that can be useful in future aerospace development, and, hell, he broke the sound barrier without an engine, so it was rewarding in every sense of the word.
/salute and congratulations to him and his team for their accomplishments!
I think people seem to be forgetting how much of a team effort this was - "all" he had to do was step out of the capsule. Without a huge team of engineers backing him none of this would have been possible.
So yes, big congrats to him for the new records, but also huge congrats to the support team and the engineers who designed and built the space suit and the capsule.
I am not familiar with the Daily Mash that you mention, but from my ex-colleagues who were fast jet pilots I understand that coming back with the flightsuit full of urine, faeces, and vomit is not an unusual occurrence, especially the former. Apparently it was not such a glamorous job as I had guessed from watching Top Gun and its much better remake, Hot Shots.
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