Supersonic skydive

Felix Baumgartner is going to dive from a baloon from an altitude of 23 miles. He expects to hit supersonic speed before he opens his parachute.

A normal plane flies at 6 to 7 miles high. Business jets fly to more like 9 miles of altitude.

One of his advisors is Joe Kittinger (age 81). Joe jumped 12 April 1961 (34 weeks before Yuri Gagarin went to space). He fell for four minutes and 36 seconds, reaching a maximum speed of 614 miles per hour. He jumped from a mere 19.5 miles and started to spin at up to 120 revolutions per minute. He blacked out and was saved by his emergency chute. About 12 years after his jump he was shot down in the Vietnam War and spent 11 months being tortured as POW in Hanoi Hilton.

Kind of makes the Vegas Skyjump seem kind of stupid.

The James Bond movie 'The World is Not Enough' featured a high-altitude sky dive, where they had to wear space suits. Don't let that diminish the experience of a normal sky-dive. I went once in Australia, and it was an experience not to forget. An error frequently made in movies during such jumps is the jumpers talking to each other, such as 'The Bucket List.' With the air rushing by, you wouldn't be able to hear yourself speak.

Quote: Wizard

I went once in Australia, and it was an experience not to forget.

Solo or Tandem?

I guess I'd like to add another question: Is there a (Western) country/state that you can solo skydive your first time? I've looked into it a bit and it looks like most places don't want you to solo until you've done countless tandems and thrown thousands of dollars at them.

I say western country because I don't want to be depending on a chute from a third world country.

Quote: pacomartin

Solo or Tandem?

Tandem. I think that is definitely the way to do it the first time. I'm not an expert at the topic, but there is a lot more to going solo than just pulling a string. I could easily be wrong about this, but I think at the very least you need to take about 8 hours of training.

Training regulations have probably changed but I took 2 training jumps decades ago. First jump involved a 4 hour course and 1 jump in the same day. The jump was solo but we were on a static line (less than 10' I think and tied to the plane to open the chute. I was able to take my second jump several month later with no further training. The training was mostly about how to roll properly on landing. Beginners weren't allowed to land standing too many broken legs. We also learned how to deploy our emergency chute. Not sure how many trainees would be able to do that on a first jump. Probably be too busy going ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Quote: Wizard

Tandem. I think that is definitely the way to do it the first time. I'm not an expert at the topic, but there is a lot more to going solo than just pulling a string. I could easily be wrong about this, but I think at the very least you need to take about 8 hours of training.

Solo (or more properly Accelerated freefall(AFF) program) requires at least eight hours of training. It also is more expensive since you need two companions to jump with you in case you are in trouble they can fly into you and grab your suit and try and save you.

More stuff can go wrong on solo jumps. I know the month that I jumped, two first time solo jumpers (both girls) died at very young ages on their first jump. One went into an uncontrollable spin and the other couldn't land her parachute and landed in traffic and was killed by a truck. It is possible to have an accident in a first time tandem jump but it is much less likely.

A friend of mine and I both decided to do our second jump as tandem jumps. For both of us they said we could pull the chute. When I jumped my headgear and glasses came off in the wind. As you attempt to grab at your head you are no longer balanced in the air and you begin to swerve wildly. I never pulled the cord.

When I landed I was ashamed to tell my friend, Mary, that I failed to pull the cord. She told me that she hit raindrops on the way down which pack quite a sting at 120 mph. It startled the hell out of her because the last thing she was prepared for was to hit something. She was so discombobulated that she didn't pull her cord either.

So I figured that 2 out of 2 of us failed to pull a cord. Of course, as we were both tandem it didn't matter. It seems to me that going solo the first time means you have to be very careful in the adrenaline atmosphere of a skyjump.

The Sr. President Bush did his first jump solo after the presidency. He also had to eject in WWII. He said he didn't want to jump tandem with the country watching him. But as near as I could tell he had about five guys jumping with him who were experts at being able to catch him mid-air and save him if something went wrong.

Quote: ahiromu

I guess I'd like to add another question: Is there a (Western) country/state that you can solo skydive your first time? I've looked into it a bit and it looks like most places don't want you to solo until you've done countless tandems and thrown thousands of dollars at them.

I say western country because I don't want to be depending on a chute from a third world country.

Accelerated Freefall (AFF), is the term for first time solo jumps in the USA. It was adopted in the 1980's. It is Harness-hold freefall skydiving student training discipline developed under Ken Coleman and adopted by USPA. AFF-rated USPA Instructors accompany the student in freefall during the initial training jumps.

It does have a higher accident rate than Tandem jumps.

There is an equivalent in Britain and Australia. For the most part static line jumps are seldom done today outside of the military.

October 8 is now the target date for Felix Baumgartner's attempt to break the Skydiving records (both height and speed).

Less than one hour to go. Check out Redbull website.

I'm watching the live feed now.

At 78,000' at 800'/min so it should be about 60 minutes to reach 120,000' . It may take a while until he jumps.

Watch here....

http://www.space.com/17956-red-bull-stratos-skydive-live-video.html

He is slowing is ascent

Impressive feat.

What happened to the view from his helmet cam? How disappointing! I waited two hours for 5 minutes of a fuzzy white dot falling?

Quote: zippyboy

What happened to the view from his helmet cam? How disappointing! I waited two hours for 5 minutes of a fuzzy white dot falling?

I think they are going to show it later. They didn't want it to be live if something happened. They haven't reported if he went supsersonic or not.

The video from his suit will be pretty crazy. He was doing some serious spinning about 1/3 of the way down,

How will visor, camera lens and rip-cords be kept free of ice?

They have posted an estimated speed of 729 mph and he did break the sound barrier, a spokesman has just confirmed.

In dry air (at a standard barometric pressure @ 68 °F), the speed of sound is 768 mph, but at altitude it was less than 700 mph.

He may be in a balloon, but the visual shot out open door of the capsule looks enough like he could be jumping from an orbiting space vehicle much higher up. (to my untrained eye)

And man, does he gain speed rapidly once he jumps -- like a rock.