HALO is for sissies!

[Major Lord]

This guy is awesome! I hope we can have CAP to help recover his body, er, I mean help with parking or something! A supersonic freefall-just too cool.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096973/Felix-Baumgartner-Skydiver-prepares-break-sound-barrier-23-mile-jump.html

Major Lord

[MSG Mac]

I thought that what he's doing is the classic definition of HALO

[titanII]

From one of the comments on the article:

Once he leaves the airless environment, you'll be able to hear him: Shiiiiiiii....

[coudano]

waiting for one of these geniuses to do a 100,000 foot dive and open subterrainean (if there is enough room for that before splatting) heh

[titanII]

waiting for one of these geniuses to do a 100,000 foot dive and open subterrainean (if there is enough room for that before splatting) heh

Well, if he makes it or not, it'll still be a good story to read about .

[♠SARKID♠]

This guy is awesome! I hope we can have CAP to help recover his body, er, I mean help with parking or something! A supersonic freefall-just too cool.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096973/Felix-Baumgartner-Skydiver-prepares-break-sound-barrier-23-mile-jump.html

Major Lord

Dang it, you beat me to it!

Captain Kittinger, eat your heart out.

[davidsinn]

This guy is awesome! I hope we can have CAP to help recover his body, er, I mean help with parking or something! A supersonic freefall-just too cool.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096973/Felix-Baumgartner-Skydiver-prepares-break-sound-barrier-23-mile-jump.html

Major Lord

Dang it, you beat me to it!

Captain Kittinger, eat your heart out.

Nobody has cojones like Joe Kittinger. That man was nuts.

[Larry Mangum]

According to Wikipedia, "Kittinger is currently advising Felix Baumgartner on a planned free-fall from 120,000 feet (about 36,000m)."

[Major Lord]

Bite your Tongue! ( Or fingers, I suppose) That would be COLONEL Kittinger, not CAPTAIN Kittinger! Yes, he was doing crazy sh.....I mean, stuff, before it was cool!

Major Lord

[NIN]

I'm excited to see what Felix Baumgartner is going to do.  The Stratos project is not your average freefall, surely.

I've followed a lot of the technical project details via some other resources I have, and the backing and technology he's got going is impressive.

Joe Kittinger, during either ManHigh or Excelsior, had a glove failure on ascent and decided to neglect to report that fact to the ground.  On landing, his hand had swelled up to 2x its original size. And that was an extremity.  Imagine other body parts  exposed to vacuum. It always threw me for a loop that the SR-71/U-2/Shuttle crewmembers wore a suit (more or less a David Clark S1032/1035 pressure suit) that did not have integrated booties, but rather the crewmember is just wearing regular insert-zippered flight boots.  I suppose that the boot should serve as at least a "partial" pressure barrier, but jeez. Those boots aren't air tight, and then neither is the lower part of the suit leg. Weird.

I've been to 23,000 and 24,000 ft without oxygen.  It was non-pressure demand breathing from takeoff to altitude, but then we shed the mask for exit and freefall. Thats about the highest you can go and not use very specialized equipment (I mean, if you're feeling sporty and -want- to get hypoxic, just find a DZ still flying a DC-3.  They take long enough to get to 13,500 that you're above 10k for a fair amount of time. Long enough to start feeling it...). 

West Tennessee Skydiving hosts a program for "HALO" jumpers to go to 30,000 ft (well, 29,500). It is pretty expensive for that, however... I used to think that $35 to 23,000 was highway robbery, but considering that I pay $27 to 13,500 now, well, inflation sucks..<GRIN>   Used to be they were allowed to go to 40,000, but the airspace rules changed pretty dramatically with the introduction of RVSM a few years back, so above 30,000 ft is heavily restricted and most skydiving planes are not equipped to go that high at all.  To go higher than 29,500, you need dispensation from the FAA, different avionics, etc. Its hardly a "somewhat routine" exercise anymore. 

[Major Lord]

Nin,

If he deploys his chute at 5K, is this a HAHO or a HALO?

Major Lord

[NIN]

Nin,

If he deploys his chute at 5K, is this a HAHO or a HALO?

Major Lord

HALO. HAHO would be stepping off the balloon and deploying immediately.  (which, given a good supply of oxygen and a more comfortable harness, would be pretty cool in and of itself)

HALO = High exit, freefall, and an opening after some length of freefall. Military jumper tend to open 4000-5000 ft due to the equipment, emergency procedures, etc. Skydivers tend to deploy around 2500-3500 ft. (I'm kind of old school, my minimum container opening altitude is 2000 ft per the rules.  I have no qualms about taking it right to 2K for my deployment and in fact frequently did during my instructor course.  Blowing thru 1500 ft and thinking "do I have a parachute about to deploy above me, or a malfunction?" is not a funny place to be)

HAHO = High exit, very little freefall and a parachute opening so that the majority of the jump is spent under the parachute.  You can cover a lot of ground from 14,000 ft, imagine the stand off distances you can cover from 40,000.

[Spaceman3750]

HALO. HAHO would be stepping off the balloon and deploying immediately.  (which, given a good supply of oxygen and a more comfortable harness, would be pretty cool in and of itself)

It also sounds like an outstanding way to land on another continent .

[Sgt. Fischer]

I thought that what he's doing is the classic definition of HALO

so did i.... 

[Stearmann4]

If he deploys his chute at 5K, is this a HAHO or a HALO?

It's been a decade, but when I was jumping MFF (military freefall), you started all your clearing procedures at 5,000', and pulled no lower than 4,000'. We usually jumped at 14,000 without O2.

Our basic HAHO training consisted of exiting at 15,000 and pulling after a 4-count which resulted in about a 25 minute descent to an DZ. True HAHO gets immensley complicated with the extra required equipment, O2 pre-breathing, and now the addition ot GPS equipment to find the DZ, etc.

I've always thought Kittenger will always be the standard no matter who comes after him. Much like the fledgling space program he was doing research for, he took that step with little research available, and not quite knowing how it would turn out. The guys now at least have the benefit of history to review, and technology.

Mike-