World record "skydive"

[Ghoulish Delight]

Live now (http://news.discovery.com/space/red-bull-stratos-skydive-live-feed-121008.html#mkcpgn=fbdsc17) on Discovery, Red Bull is sponsoring a record parachuting attempt, from a balloon-supported capsule at 120,000 feet.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Though wind is causing problems now....and it was just aborted. Move along, nothing to see here.

[cirquelover]

Darn it, thanks for the heads up anyway. I tried to watch yesterday too but it was canceled.

[scaeagles]

I want to be that man. Not when it's cancelled. When he gets to do it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

He's back at it. 50,000 feet up right now!

http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/10/red-bull-stratos-jump-live/

[Ghoulish Delight]

The ascent is expected to take around 3 hours. About an hour in right now.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Went a little faster. He's broken the record for highest altitude manned balloon ascent. Probably about 10 minutes away from jump height. But the heat in his helmet isn't working, so I wonder if he'll jump or not.

[Ghoulish Delight]

They've decided to go ahead with the jump despite the helmet heat problem. Any minute now.

[BarTopDancer]

Amazing.

[Moonliner]

Huh. All I ever see is "Starting Soon".

[Kevy Baby]

It as shown live on a couple of channels here - lucky to have caught it a few minutes before he "jumped"

[Ghoulish Delight]

Ironically, by breaking the record for fastest free fall, he failed to break the record for longset duration of freefall, despite starting 15K feet higher than the previous record.

[Kevy Baby]

Yeah, I thought that was odd

[Ghoulish Delight]

Among other things, the record holder (Joseph Kittinger, 1960), blacked out before his freefall was over. No one ever figured out for sure what happened, but the assumption is that one of the helmet tiedown cords wrapped around his neck. Because he blacked out, his chute deployed automatically at 20,000 feet. Since Baumgartner maintained consciousness, he probably pulled his chute manually when he wanted to, rather than waiting unconscious until the last safe moment.

[Alex]

As I posted to Facebook:

Thanks to modern technology today I watched a grey dot zoom around a screen while a cameraman tried to keep it centered.

I was told that this dot was a man falling at many hundreds of miles an hour. But I'm wary since once upon a time I was told different dots on a different screen were lasers I was shooting at asteroids.

Fool me once...

[Moonliner]

I assume the capsule was recovered and not just left to drift away?

[Alex]

Correct. About the time he was landing you could hear mission control talking through the release of the capsule and beginning of its recovery.

[Kevy Baby]

Something somewhere isn't right. From what I can find (with admittedly limited research):

Drop height:
Baumgartner:128,100 ft.
Kittinger: 102,600 ft.

Chute Open:
Baumgartner:8,254 ft.
Kittinger: 18-20,000 ft.

Freefall distance:
Baumgartner:119,846 ft.
Kittinger: 84-86,600 ft.

So if Baumgartner had a longer distance free fall, how did Kittinger free fall for a longer time?

[Strangler Lewis]

Having padded his suit with cotton balls just in case things didn't go well, Kittinger was fluffier and therefore less dense. Also, he had webbed fingers.

[Capt Jack]

possibly Baumgartner maintained a much higher average speed during that period than Kittinger. considering he was already freighting pretty well by the time he started to decellerate from atmospheric resistance (probably about the same alt that Kittinger began his freefall) , Kitt's overall avg speed undoubtedly started lower and never rose above X.

also from what Id read, Kitt blacked out during his decent, so was no doubt not exactly holding a good aerodynamic shape...probably more like a tumbling leaf, vs B finally getting control and maintaining a static shape

[BarTopDancer]

The whole thing has been uploaded to YouTube (http://youtu.be/rNhmYaWiPEk)

[RStar]

So if Baumgartner had a longer distance free fall, how did Kittinger free fall for a longer time?

It was his speed. Baumgartner was going so fast, that as GD pointed out, he didn't break the record for the longest time durring freefall, even though it was the longest distance. He did, however, break the record for the fastest freefall, and broke the sound barrier (mach 1) without a vehicle.

[lashbear]

He broke the sound barrier (mach 1) without a vehicle.

He could have tested that by Farting on the way down, and seeing if he could hear it after the chute deployed. :D

[Kevy Baby]

He was going fast enough: he didn't need the extra propulsion.