Well, technically, it’s upper atmospheric diving (only twenty-three miles altitude), but it should provide a lot of useful data for actual spacedivers as Armadillo and others start offering elevator service to a hundred kilometers. It’s actually kind of surprising to me that Kittinger’s record has stood so long.
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Baumgartner is nuts. A lot of skydivers dont like the guy, for some reason.
Kittenger’s record has stood for so long because this is a difficult and expensive undertaking. Kittenger had the resources of the Air Force to pay for his great leaps.
I wonder what changed Kittenger’s mind because the last I read he wasn’t helping anybody do this. That he did it as a research project and not as a ‘stunt’.
Article says he thinks the Red Bull team isn’t as crazy as the rest (actually the article indicates he thinks they had the proper respect for safety and the resources to carry it through).
I am so giddy for this, I can’t believe it. I wish I could do this stuff.
I wonder what changed Kittenger’s mind because the last I read he wasn’t helping anybody do this.
A dump truck full of money from Red Bull?
Article says he thinks the Red Bull team isn’t as crazy as the rest (actually the article indicates he thinks they had the proper respect for safety and the resources to carry it through).
There’s probably some truth to that — Red Bull seems to have cornered the daredevil market and I can’t imagine they’ve done so by being reckless. OTOH, I’ll point back to that dump truck.
Did Kittenger actually break the sound barrier? Because I’m having difficulty picturing a human-shaped projectile doing so under any conditions without ripping to shreds. I mean, unless he’s using some sort of disposable conic shield to kill the turbulence.
IIRC, Kittenger reached a peak speed of 609 MPH which probably wasn’t supersonic. It was in the transonic region where there may have been localized areas of supersonic airflow over his body. He was over 80,000 feet high at the peak velocity, so the low air density would’ve reduced the aerodynamic forces on his body considerably.
When it comes to high altitude, high speed parachuting, the most extreme example I know of is when an SR-71 broke up at Mach 3.18 at 78,000 feet back in 1966. The pilot survived but the back seater died. Kittenger wasn’t making his high altitude jumps as a stunt. He was testing the equipment to be used on high altitude planes like the Blackbird.
There has been a few supersonic ejections at much lower altitiudes where the pilot survived but only a few. The aerodynamic forces at low altitude at Mach 1 are much worse than far faster speeds at high altitude.
Sage Cheshire, which is doing the project, is very serious, and a competent bunch of people.