Really???

[manfredvonrichthofen]

Ok, so I have no proof as of yet, other than a single title, no article that I have been able to find, and no videos as of yet. Just this...

TODAY: MAN ATTEMPTING SKYDIVE FROM SPACE

So, has anyone seen anything about this other than the title? And what are your thoughts?
Personally, I fear for his safety, but I also wonder about the validity of an actual "space" beginning skydive.

I just found this... So cool!!!
http://m.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0316/Skydiver-falls-from-stratosphere-in-preparation-for-space-jump

[Eclipse]

Yes, he's trying to break the record.
NIN will know the guys name.

[manfredvonrichthofen]

It's Felix Baumgartner he is from Austria. Personally I think the coolest part of this is how ambitious it is personally. His highest skydive before this las one was 30,000 feet. A big jump in altitude.

[NIN]

Yes, he's trying to break the record.
NIN will know the guys name.

Felix? Yeah, he's a nut. I'm not as well connected to him as I am to Gary Connery (the English guy who wingsuited into a heap of boxes last week), but I have met a couple people working on the Red Bull Stratos project.

You might note that this was back in March he did the 71,000 ft jump. According to published reports, he's shooting for 100,000+ ft by the end of the summer.

Here's another guy (Olav Zipser, considered to be basically the father of modern freeflying) who plans to do something similar, but with a rocket not a balloon: http://www.synergymoon.com/freeflyastro.html

ETA: Olav wants to jump from 100km, above the Kaman line. This is definitely "space". Thats > 329,000 ft.

[titanII]

I'll be interested to see how he lands if/when he actually does the jump. I had read an article a year or two ago in Popular Science, when the Red Bull Stratos Project was first announced, and it didn't seem like they had really worked out how to land safely from that altitude, at that speed.

[Spartan]

it didn't seem like they had really worked out how to land safely from that altitude, at that speed.

Changing your body position and the way you meet the relative wind can do a lot to increas or decrease drag (slow you down or speed you up).  You will fall a lot faster if you are streamlined in a "standing" position than you will if you are spread eagle with maximum surface area creating drag. 

If you watch Freefall - Skydive from 31km you can see at 4:16 it mentions how high Joseph Kittinger was when he opened his parachute.  It should give you an idea of how long it took to slow him down.  I imagine the Red Bull Stratos people have taken the lessons learned from Col. Kittinger's record jump seen in the video and others like it.

I am personally interested in how far from the release point as plotted on the ground Felix will land jumping from this altitude.

[NIN]

I'll be interested to see how he lands if/when he actually does the jump. I had read an article a year or two ago in Popular Science, when the Red Bull Stratos Project was first announced, and it didn't seem like they had really worked out how to land safely from that altitude, at that speed.

What do you mean? They have it completely worked out.  There really is no thing to be worked out.

A body does not continue to accelerate in the atmosphere. In fact, a body will tend to _de_celerate to "normal terminal velocity" as it gets closer to the ground (and the atmosphere gets correspondingly thicker, and thus slows the descent rate).   Yes, a body will fall very quickly up high, where there is little air resistance.  Its physical velocity toward the planet may be relatively high (on the order of several hundred miles per hour) while the indicated or "felt" air speed is considerably different due to pressure.

This is why Space Ship One, while doing Mach 3 or some crazy number at altitude, is only really doing what appears (to its structure) as 160kts.

The concern during the descent, especially above 70,000 ft or so, is that there is very, very, very little air to "work against." If a spin develops, there is very little Felix can do to counteract that. And up that high, a spin can easily generate 8-9 negative G's ('eyeballs out', so to speak) which would cause severe red-out conditions to the jumper.

The rig that Felix is jumping is equipped with a releasable drogue parachute for just such an emergency. It is hoped that by deploying this drogue and where it is positioned, a spinning jumper would very quickly find stability under an anchor point.

(here's a cool video with my friend, Douglas Spotted Eagle, interviewing Kelly Farrington from Velocity Sports about building the Stratos rig: Kelly Farrington Velocity)

[titanII]

What do you mean? They have it completely worked out.  There really is no thing to be worked out.

Well when I read the article, Sir, they were talking about different plans for landing, including ramps and some other rather unconventional methods. I guess I haven't been keeping up enough on the project..

[NIN]

What do you mean? They have it completely worked out.  There really is no thing to be worked out.

Well when I read the article, Sir, they were talking about different plans for landing, including ramps and some other rather unconventional methods. I guess I haven't been keeping up enough on the project..

Wait, are we talking about Red Bull Stratos (jumping from the edge of space) or landing a wingsuit without using the parachute?

As far as wingsuiting goes: Jeb Corliss was trying some long ski-ramp thingy.  Then Gary Connery just said "Bollocks to that, mate, let me stack up some cartons and we'll give a try, yeah?"  The low-tech approach worked much better. (no kidding: a buddy of mine this weekend was looking at the flight data from the test jumps on his new wingsuit and he was able to achieve "-20 mph" by building up some airspeed and then "flaring hard".   Would kind of stink to be trying to land a wingsuit, come in, over rotate and wind up floating down your runway of boxes like a 150 in the hands of Helen Keller until you're past the end... Yeah, that would be a bit of a "whoops, over did that a bit!")

As far as Stratos: once they reach the bottom 90% of the atmosphere (that below 20,000 ft), it just becomes a regular skydive from a deployment and landing standpoint.  The jumper will have slowed to whatever his terminal velocity is for that configuration (jumper+ spacesuit+rig), which I bet will be around 135-145mph.  Then all you do is deploy like normal.

[manfredvonrichthofen]

That's is really cool info NIN. I wouldn't have thought about that.

One thing I am wondering is if they might use a body sail type rig in order to help controll his decent, or it at that altitude, would that likely cause more severe problems?

[NIN]

One thing I am wondering is if they might use a body sail type rig in order to help controll his decent, or it at that altitude, would that likely cause more severe problems?

Guy I know, Jhonathan Flores, just set the wingsuit world records (per Guinness): 9 minutes and some seconds. His arms must have been *tired*. I know mine are after just two minutes.

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/Search.aspx?q=wingsuit

(He also set "absolute distance" for flying 17.5 miles after exiting at 37,000 ft, and also an altitude record)

But yeah, it is likely that a wingsuit wouldn't do you much good that high. Yet.

[Huey Driver]

http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=14676.0

[Major Lord]

I would be very surprised if they could figure out a way to add a wing to his spacesuit.....hopefully, the phrase "terminal velocity" won't apply directly to our dare devil jumper. FYI, the density of air increases about 1% with every 80 meters of increasing proximity to the ground, and assuming our jumper has a fixed ballistic coefficient ( coefficient of drag) The idea that a projectile ( body) falling towards earth will accelerate at 32 FPS squared is incorrect. In fact, the velocity will fall off roughly more as a function of the square root, since air density increases at lower elevation effectively capping the bodies absolute velocity. Of course, the sky diver may intentionally change his attitude, "dirtying up" his coefficient of drag and slowing his rate of descent, but his level of intentional deceleration is limited by air density. A sky diver is not much of a "wing" in the near vacuum of near-space. And as NIN points out, if he starts a spin, centrifugal force ( Inertia) could quickly induce enough force to explode his head like a chicken pot pie in the Microwave oven. This is a very dangerous project.

Major Lord

[NIN]

And as NIN points out, if he starts a spin, centrifugal force ( Inertia) could quickly induce enough force to explode his head like a chicken pot pie in the Microwave oven. This is a very dangerous project.

Nice visual. Using that next time I'm doing my parachute aerodynamics class