AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Stratosphere freefall8/17/2023 While reaching such speeds can cause stress on an aircraft, planners for this jump believe there will be little effect on Baumgartner because he will be at an altitude at which there is so little air that shock waves are barely transmitted.īut on a more serious note, he added, “Of course I’m afraid of dying, because I worked so hard to reach this level. If he loses consciousness during the five-minute plunge, he will survive only if his parachute deploys automatically.Īnother unknown: the effects on the body of breaking the sound barrier. He and his team have practiced how he can avoid getting trapped in a dangerous “horizontal spin.” At temperatures that could hit 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit or lower, and an atmosphere so thin that his blood would vaporize if he were unprotected, his life will depend on the integrity of his pressure suit. He plans to fall 115,000 feet in less than five minutes, then deploy a parachute for the final 5,000 feet to Earth. Then he will climb out of the capsule, jump off the step with a bunny hop and form a crouched “delta” position to maximize his speed. When the launch occurs, Baumgartner expects to spend two or three hours on the ascent in a capsule hanging from the helium balloon. Years of preparation and untold costs to the primary sponsor, Red Bull, led to Tuesday’s scheduled attempt. ‘Human helicopter’ breaks record for world’s longest flight “A lot of anticipation getting to this point, and then feeling that he’s going to have to wait – it’s a lot of anxiety on his part, I’m sure.” “For Felix, it’s a lot of frustration,” Thompson added. “There’s a lot riding on that, so the main thing for us is making sure the probability is very high,” Thompson said.Īsked how he felt about having to call off the attempt, Thompson replied: “Deflated. However, as Baumgartner waited in the capsule to be carried up to high altitude, another wind gust whipped the more than 500-foot-tall white balloon and ruined it for the mission.Īrt Thompson, the technical project director for the mission, said only one back-up balloon is now available to carry out the attempt. Organizers initially delayed the balloon launch Tuesday morning because of gusting winds, then tried to make it happen a few hours later at the Roswell launch site.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |