Record Parachute Jump started

[Guckytos]

Currently live in german television can the record attempt of Felix Baumgartner be seen, who wants to get the new record in parachute jumping.

He wants to go 36km and then jump out of the balloon.

Currently (17:57 GMT+1) he is already at 10 km. He should reach his final height in about an hour.

Then he will jump out and reach on his downward fall supersonic speed.

Really interesting and bold!

Edit: 18:54 GMT+1 --> 24 km height reached.

[Guckytos]

Felix Baumgartner jumped out of the balloon at the height of ~ 39 km (128,000 ft) at 20:07 GMT+1

He will have a freefall of about 6 minutes!

[wieczor]

He will have a freefall of about 6 minutes!

I saw 4 mn 18 sec of freefall !!!
Perhaps 9 mn for touch down... (6 ???)

[Guckytos]

It was planned that he should have about 6 minutes of free fall. But as the balloon was 3 km higher than originally planned, he gathered more speed than planned --> less free fall time.

He has also reached a supersonic speed of 1342.8 km/h (at the height he was surpassing it the speed of sound is at about 1078 km/h).

So he now holds the following records:
- Highest manned balloon flight
- Highest jump off
- Highest fall
- Highest supersonic speed (for a human without aircraft)

Will be interesting how long it takes until the next will try to top these.

[Reiko]

I wonder how fast he was falling when he opened his shoot. I was worried it would break loose.

[Chuft-Captain]

Once he re-entered the normal layers of the atmosphere, he would have quickly decelerated to his usual terminal velocity (I think about 220mph for a human), so no different to any other parachute jump in that respect. No more than the usual risk with the parachute deploy.

PS. I didn't realize that he took a gun with him.... (duck season?):

"I wonder how fast he was falling when he opened his shoot. I was worried it would break loose."

Did he start shooting before or after he opened his chute? - Maybe that's why he was spinning!

[Fenerit]

Once he re-entered the normal layers of the atmosphere, he would have quickly decelerated to his usual terminal velocity (I think about 220mph for a human), so no different to any other parachute jump in that respect. No more than the usual risk with the parachute deploy.

Yes.

I wonder how fast he was falling when he opened his shoot. I was worried it would break loose.

At the same velocity like usual parachute jumpers... Like you have seen, he was rolling (jump's angular momentum within low air's friction) then he got the right direction (loss of angular momentum within air's friction). The further air's friction has slow down its velocity toward the max speed that a freefall body can achieve within lower "air" (below the 400 km/h).

[John Van Vliet]

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