Space Jump

Stewart Brand, writing about space colonies, observed that "if you live in a satellite, the Earth is something that goes on in your sky." For Felix Baumgartner, the daredevil skydiver who seduced the world with his chiseled jaw and seeming invulnerability to fear (and who broke the sound barrier with his body last weekend) the Earth is something else. The satellite he leapt from, a weather balloon 24 miles above the Earth, wasn't his home. But briefly, and especially for the millions who watched the gossamer balloon float upwards to the strange blue-black gradient of space's edge, it turned…

While I am still fresh on the Space Jump topic, let me take it to the extreme. Star Trek extreme. SPOILER ALERT But really, is this a spoiler alert if it is from the trailer of a movie that has been out forever? Of course, I talking about the latest Star Trek movie where three guys jump out of a shuttle and into the atmosphere. So, in light of the Red Bull Stratos jump, how would this jump compare? First, my assumptions: This Star Trek jump is on the planet Vulcan. I am going to assume this is just like Earth in terms of gravity and density of air. The jumpers in Star Trek have on stuff…

A new video from the Red Bull Stratos Jump guys came out. Here it is: This reminds me of an unanswered question about the Stratos jump that I didn't address on my last post on this topic. Commenter Long Drop asked about how much Felix would heat up as he falls from 120,000 feet. This is a great question. The first, off the bat answer is that he won't heat up too much. Why do I say this? Well, when Joe Kittinger jumped from over 100,000 feet and didn't melt. Still, this is a great thing to calculate. How do you calculate something like this? I will look at this in terms of energy. For…

Red Bull is sponsoring this sky dive from really really really high up - Stratos: Mission to the Edge of Space. Seems dangerous. The basic idea is that Felix Baumgartner will take a balloon ride up to 120,000 feet and jump out. Here are some questions: Will he reach supersonic speeds? The Red Bull site says: "can Felix react to a 35 second acceleration to mach 1?" How about the claim that he will free fall for 5 minutes and 35 seconds? That seems pretty short. In 1960, Joe Kittinger jumped from 102,800 feet. Will 20,000 feet make a large difference? Assumptions Clearly, this can be a…