questions → anyone hear about the dude skydiving from space?

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Anyone hear about the dude skydiving from space?

Feb 25, 2012 1:58 AM

It's called the Red Bull Stratos challenge. 120,000 feet in the sky, and speeds exceeding the speed of sound. Pretty nuts. Check out redbullstratos.com for more details. I'm excited to see this thing become reality.

kschom kschom

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Just to save everyone the trouble of opening Calculator, that's almost 23 miles...straight up. Sounds like fun.

edit: He'll break the sound barrier in the first 20K feet. That...that is quick.

rprebel rprebel
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That would be incredible!

stupimlico stupimlico
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expected free fall time of over 5 minutes... that is a looooong time to be just falling... and falling and falling.

kschom kschom
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Felix Baumgartner thru Red Bull has it scheduled in August 2012. 120,000 feet from a balloon.

jhenin8888woot jhenin8888woot
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NASA has a hard enough time keeping the shuttle cool, think redbulls insurance is going to cover this? Think again. This is a stunt to get more people addicted to something that's bad for them. I'd expect this of Altria (Philip Morris) or Newt, but this is truly irresponsible business.

mschauber mschauber
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well they're taking a balloon up, not a shuttle. and this project has been going on for a couple years. if they're aiming for august, i'd guess that insurance might be something they have figured out already. and by golly, if he can successfully skydive from 120,000 feet, i sure am going to drink more red bull!

kschom kschom
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@mschauber: Buzzkill. Btw, don't you think that the guy skydiving would have the phrase "medical insurance" pop into his head when he first heard the plan?

captainsuperdawg captainsuperdawg
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@mschauber: the shuttle orbits the earth at several thousand miles per hour, so as it enters the atmosphere there is a lot of friction. This guy will be falling at less than mach 2, much less friction than an orbiting spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere.

kamikazeken kamikazeken
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@rprebel: A quick google search says terminal velocity for a person is probably somewhere around 60m/s, while the speed of sound is 340.29m/s. Am I missing something? Otherwise I don't think there's any way a falling person will pass the speed of sound.

spacemonkey6401 spacemonkey6401
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@spacemonkey6401: Because of the incredible height, wind resistance will be minimal at the beginning of his fall. He'll break the sound barrier (which will be ~650mph at that height I think), then as he gets closer to Earth the resistance will increase, slowing him down.

I hope that makes sense. It does in my cold/flu addled head lol.

edit: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/stratos-space-jump-can-you-fall-faster-than-the-speed-of-sound/

rprebel rprebel
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This isn't a new thing. America's first frays into space involved people going up into the far upper atmosphere in balloons and parachuting back to earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excelsior

matt1976 matt1976

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