Felix Baumgartner is shown inside his capsule as he ascends in preparation for his record-breaking jump October 14, 2012.
Image: Red Bull Stratos
An Austrian daredevil plummeted into the record books today (October 14), breaking the mark for highest-ever skydive after leaping from a balloon more than 24 miles above Earth's surface. Add one more feat: Going supersonic.
Felix Baumgartner stepped into the void nearly 128,000 feet (39,000 meters) above southeastern New Mexico Sunday at just after 12 p.m. MT (2 p.m. ET, 1800 GMT), then landed safely on the desert floor about 20 minutes later. His harrowing plunge shattered the skydiving altitude record, which had stood for more than 50 years, and it notched a few other firsts as well.
During his freefall, for example, Baumgartner became the first skydiver ever to break the sound barrier, which is about 690 mph (1,110 kph) at such lofty heights. And this happened on a special day—today is the 65th anniversary of the first supersonic airplane flight, which was piloted by American Chuck Yeager in 1947 aboard the Bell X-1 rocket plane.
"I know the whole world is watching now, and I wish the world could see what I see," Baumgartner said just before the leap. "And sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you really are."
Preliminary results of the jump showed Baumgartner spent about 4 minutes and 20 seconds in freefall (a record without a drogue parachute). His maximum speed was 833 mph (1,342.8 kph), said Brian Utley, an air sports official watching over event.
The jump's top speed was thus Mach 1.4—considerably faster than the speed of sound.
Applause and cheers erupted in a post-jump press conference as Utley relayed the good news.
About the only glitch during the jump was a problem with the faceplate heater in Baumgartner's helmet, which the skydiver and his Mission Control team worked on during the hours-long ascent. They ultimately decided to proceed with the jump despite the heater glitch, and later Baumgartner reported the heater was working.
While in freefall, Baumgartner went into a spin briefly, but was able to recover and go into a controlled descent. He said his visor was fogging up during the dramatic descent. After the daredevil fell toward Earth for more than four minutes, his parachute deployed and applause erupted from his Mission Control.
Roof of the sky
Baumgartner's mission—called Red Bull Stratos, and sponsored by the Red Bull energy drink company—also set the record for highest-ever manned balloon flight, officials said. Project officials touted the skydive as a "space jump," calling it a "Mission to the Edge of Space."
The officially recognized space border is actually higher, however. Most experts generally regard space to begin at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers), or about 327,000 feet.
One of the many folks congratulating Baumgartner today is doubtless Joe Kittinger, who set the previous altitude mark of 102,800 feet (31,333 m) in 1960 while a captain in the U.S. Air Force. Kittinger serves as an adviser to the Red Bull Stratos mission and communicated with Baumgartner during his ascent from mission control on the ground. [Extreme Skydive From 120,000 Feet Animated]
"I couldn't have done it any better myself," Kittinger radioed Baumgartner as he descended under parachute.
The 43-year-old Baumgartner is a veteran thrill-seeker, having leapt from some of the world's tallest buildings and soared across the English Channel in freefall with the aid of a carbon wing. But he said today's historic jump should do more than just etch his name in the record books.
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20 Comments
Add CommentThe holes in the "official story" here are as plentiful and obvious as in so many, if not all other, such "official stories".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you're traveling faster than sound, it is recorded, you experience immense amounts of vibration that would have destroyed Baumgartner's suit and equipment.
Slowing down from more than 800 miles per hour, a drogue chute could rip Baumgartner is two. Assuming the chite itself wasn't ripped to shreds.
The article didn't mention the sonic boom, which certainly would have happened if Baumgartner truly broke the speed of sound.
If you believe the "official story" here, you couild be as dim witted as the New World Order needs you to be.
So, is this an unofficial story? Or is it some kind of conspiracy? Are you one of the top skeptics out there making sure we don't believe all that we read? Do you think he tried to open his parachute before he reached atmospheric terminal velocity? Tell us please.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI work for the New World Order. We know where you live, and we are coming to get you. Look out for the black helicopter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI happen to have watched it live, the jump. It is not a measure of whether the information was wrong because simply enough the altimeter would practically calculate the speed for you. The distance he cover in the time he fell. Not that hard to do, right? So if you're saying the news crews and the entire thing was fake from a trusty source, then its like saying man never landed on the moon. Just because you weren't there, doesn't mean it didn't happen. They don't have to put a full 50 page report on the trip just to make it true. They don't have to mention something for it to be true. When you look down at your shoes and see that they are black, that doesn't mean you actually have to say that they're are black in order to be true.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmong other things, at more than 800 miles per hour, Baumgartner literally slammed into the tropos[here like flying into a wall, like landing stomach first in a swimming pool, like a massive belly whopper. He was likely going many, many hundreds of miles an hour when he reached the troposphere. At that speed, he would drop right through the troposphere in a matter of seconds. Even the denser air of the troposphere needs time to slow something down to parachute speed! And it would not have been able to slow Baungartner down from more than 800 mph to only about 100 mph in only those few seconds! Rememebr, Dale Earnhardt, Sr. was in a car, skidding sideways at about 130 mph and moving forward at only about 25 mph when he "collided" with the wall, and New World Order shills insisted that killed him! Baumgartner went through many times that, without a car to protect him!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe intensity of a sonic boom must depend on the size of the object and the rate at which it passes the speed of sound.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLikewise, the vibrations experienced by a jet pilot as the jet acts/reacts through the sonic boom are going to be different than those experienced by a much smaller, much softer body.
As a physics teacher, I know that half-reckoned attempts at reasoning are a dime a dozen. Many of my colleagues have done it, and I have made from-the-hip errors myself. Thoroughly editing one's thoughts and still having something useful to say is the trick in any intellectual endeavor.
Where is the evidence that the subject went from 800 mph to 100 mph in a few seconds?
And "slam" is not a very appropriate term for flying into the very thinnest part of the troposphere at a mere 800 mph. The increase in density of the air is quite gradual throughout the entire trip of the subject. Please refer to this chart of density, etc.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Comparison_US_standard_atmosphere_1962.svg&page=1
And realize that the subject reached 800 mph through the very same atmosphere that is supposed to be slamming him—Had it been dense enough to slam, it would not have allowed him to speed up in the first place. He didn't jump from the space station, merely from the bottom of the stratosphere.
Pilots who bail from fighter jets aren't ripped to shreds when they leave the cockpit and enter much denser troposphere at high speed. But this conspiracy theory has been completely ripped to shreds by a second look.
Yes, Julian, I always thought Red Bull was in on "it". Youtube, well, it goes without saying. This is just another step towards total mind control - like, they never say what happened to the capsule, right? It is UP THERE, still WATCHING YOU! Quick, put your tinfoil hat on!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjulianpenrod I suppose you don't think we landed on the moon either?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe timeline of the actual speeds are what's important. He reached his maximum velocity within 30 seconds of the jump, he spent the other 4:00 minutes of the free fall decelerating as the air got more and more dense until he was at about 9,500 ft where he deployed his parachute.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnybody who watched the event live and the Livestream question and answer afterwards would have all of the so-called "preliminary data" that will be sent for certification.
Thanks NeroMaj for the important summary of the data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, 350 m/s in 30 s +/- 5 s would be an acceleration of 10 m/s^2 (to one significant digit, because the time had only one), which is our familiar "g." Totally reasonable.
Decelerating in four minutes from 350 m/s to 45 m/s would be an upward acceleration of 1 m/s, nothing harsh at all. Also totally reasonable.
@julianpenrod, wow, your arrogance is astounding! You reject all the independently verifiable facts in favor of your own hypothesis based mostly on your ignorance. Dale Earnhardt did not die because of speed alone, "the crash was very severe, several events coincided in a unique manner to produce a tragic result, and none of them can be singled out as the sole cause." Your attempt to use Earnhardt's death as "proof" that this is a hoax is a straw man argument. And your arguments about the effects on supersonic flight are similar to the ones used not so long ago to argue why we would never be able to travel faster than the speed of sound. Again I have to point you to the Dunning-Kruger effect. In this case though it is not only your ignorance that gives you a false sense of confidence but also your paranoid delusions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"During his freefall, for example, Baumgartner became the first skydiver ever to break the sound barrier, which is about 690 mph (1,110 kph) at such lofty heights."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe speed of sound in air is determined by TEMPERATURE only. An amateur mistake.
Julianpenrod, you are a hoot. Thanks for keeping these posts fun and entertaining by preventing them from descending into a dry discussion of the facts!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Eric, only in an "ideal" gas which air is not. What's more, air temperature changes with altitude. An amateur mistake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFelix Baumgartner will be known as the first living human body who himself traveled faster than the sound. Bravo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe "argument" is that, immediately after Baumgartner reached 834 mph, the air suddenly became dense enough to start slowing him down. He was still in the stratosphere. If the air was dense enough to stop him going any faster, it should have stopped him from going that fast. Just because some numbers flash on a screen or are sent to someone's computer doesn't mean they actually occurred. And it's likely he was still traveling above the speed of sound for some time, even as he entered the troposphere. And that brings up a point. Traveling so fast, he was breaking sound barrier after sound barrier as he went from one body of air to the next warmer and denser body. Jets travel at one height and so break only one sound barrier. Baumgartner should have been breaking a number of sound barriers as he fell. Which again argues that there should have been a boom, in fact, several booms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was going to say that it must hurt to be you, Julian, but then I realized you probably don't feel the pain. Good luck.... Felix Baumgartner and his sponsor are awesome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny high school student can calculate the speed that can be reached after a few seconds of free fall. Of course we have (also) the friction from air.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not going to make that calculation but at first sight reaching a speed of Mach 1.4 seems a little bit too high.
How can your body tolerate when you apply the brakes by opening the parachute? But that is exactly what Mr. Baumgartner did.
I have no doubt he jumped from 39 kilometers above earth below.
It seems the operation was carefully prepared. To doubt about it is an offense to this brave man and the team behind him.
Of course all data should be carefully reviewed and somehow reported otherwise it would be useless.
It was really fantastic, spectacular. Probably comparison is not proper but it causes such an impression that we remember Neil and the acrobatic descent we have just all witnessed in Mars, or going all the way to the bottom of the deep sea.
I do not need to go so high to see how big he really is, and the team supporting him, of course. This is not a one-man enterprise.
It almost seems he can jump out of a spaceship and land safely on land.
What he has just done is a triumph of human kind. We now know how far we can stretch and still survive.
A book should be written with all data carefully check by a high level university team.
We will remember you Felix as we remember Neil!
And where is the capsule? It is a 1 ton capsule. The full story should be told in a book. Congratulations to everybody involved, including family and friends not to mention the fantastic technical team!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjulianpenrod: You think the earth is only 9,000 years old and dinosaurs never existed and Charles Darwin was a liar and now you think the Baumgartner space jump is totally phoney. You are hilarious. You live inside your own fantasy world devoid of any real facts. I hope you ignore all the haters here and keep posting your ridiculous drivel because I always look forward to reading your absurd comedy posts. The world needs more comedy.
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