How high? How fast?

As I write this a 43 Austrian skydiver is preparing to perform the jump of his life. His location is Roswell, New Mexico and his epic jump will land him a well earned place in the record books as the highest free fall ever.

He plans to jump from a height of 120,000ft or in new money, 36.5km. That is nearly 23 miles! To put this height in some perspective Mount Everest is at a height of 8,848m and a Boeing 747 travels at a height of 14,000m. Over twice the height of a Jumbo Jet! That is some crazy jump!

This stunt requires a number of technological problems to be overcome. Firstly Felix Baumgarter has to get up there. As he is above the height that planes fly he can't just jump out of a aeroplane in the traditional way. Therefore he will travel to the edge of space using a helium balloon. He will sit in a capsule underneath the balloon as it lifts him towards the heavens. Initially the balloon will appear small but as he travels aloft the decreasing pressure will cause the helium and therefore the balloon to expand.

http://www.techedon.com/wp-content/themes/striking/cache/images/Skydiving_From_Space-480x720.jpg
As the atmosphere is just 2% of that on the ground he requires to wear a state of the art space suit.

When he jumps he will be reaching speeds nearing 690mph. It is possible that he could break the sound barrier; what this might do to his body is poorly understood. Apparently the pressure waves might cause his body to enter an uncontrollable spin which could be potentially fatal. According to the experts he must maintain a special position as he falls to ensure that he remains stable.

If all goes well he will open his parachute one and a half kilometres above the ground and parachute safely to the desert floor.

If things go wrong I doubt there will be much left to see...TV coverage has a built in delay just in case.

Good luck to him.



Comments

  1. Ed Vogue9 October 2012 at 18:49

    Oh no. Due to gusty winds attempt aborted today

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9 October 2012 at 18:55

    I want to watch that, please can you update us on screening please?
    As a keen science man I would have thought you would have taken the opportunity to also discuss terminal velocity which I'm assuming he will slow down to after reaching the speed of sound? Missed learning opportunity there Ed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ed Vogue9 October 2012 at 19:06

    http://www.redbullstratos.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sparkly bathroom prevented by natural chemical equilibria

Image
I have had the pleasure of cleaning the bathroom today. I have used a number of different products over the years to find a chemical that will remove the annoying marks from the tiles, taps and shower screen. The hard water means that no matter how clean and sparkly I get the taps, they are only two showers away from being once again covered in the annoying white powder.   Crystals of limescale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kesselstein_k.jpg) There is a lot of interesting chemistry involved in limescale. It is essentially deposits of insoluble calcium carbonate left behind from the hot water. But how does it get into the water in the first place and why doesn't it stay in it? Limescale initially starts as limestone, chalk and other similar sedimentary rocks that formed from the bodies of tiny calcium containing sea creatures that lived in warm shallow tropical seas millions of years ago. See the BBC clip at this learning zone site. Since their formation these rocks have been
Read more

Polka dot, 7 inches, 15 minutes, luke warm

Image
January 2010 and a new craze hit Facebook. Across the social network women started to post colours as their status. Some posted beige, some ivory, some hot pink, some polka dot. For a while people across the world were confused, intrigued, indeed fascinated by what these colours could mean. In fact the colours referred to the colour of the bra the woman was wearing that particular day. This 'craze' was in aid of a breast cancer awareness campaign a fantastic cause and in my opinion a clever and innovative use of Facebook. Over the last couple of days some of the ladies have begun to post a length measured in inches followed by a time in minutes. This has resulted in a status that might read '6 inches 25 minutes'. Oh how amusing...I like a bit of smut but I found these updates strangely annoying. Obviously it doesn't mean what it says and is code for something fairly inane and boring. So slightly intrigued and determined to crack the code I did what I always
Read more

What's Your Station?

Image
One of my most vivid memories is completing my Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition in the New Forest one October half term. It must have been 1987 as Mike Smith was the Radio 1 breakfast host and I remember cooking bacon on the Trangia stove, in a field behind a scout hut in Fordingbridge, whilst listening to T'Pau's new single China in Your Hand, it was a gorgeous Autumn morning.  http://asymptotia.com/wp-images/2007/08/Radio_dynamo.jpg I had a red plastic battery operated radio that we listened to as we walked. That radio once got us into trouble on a snowy February in Dartmoor as the magnet in the speaker affected our compass, a rookie error that put us out a couple of miles searching for a postbox on Rough Tor.   Radio 1 was the station to listen to, the new music was heard first on this station, and alongside Mike Smith the line-up included Simon Bates, Mike Read, Simon Mayo and of course Steve Wright. Whilst at Uni I still enjoyed listening to Simon Mayo's breakfast
Read more