Trouble Maker

I ate it, nomnomnomnomnom!

Sounds good, just wanted to jump in line in case your deal fell through. Because it is a good deal, GL with picking it up today.

Too wide front tires and/or bad offset on the rims?

He will feel almost nothing, not just from the drag but from no reference points of visual or physical contact. Close your eyes in a constantly moving (newer, smooth) elevator and see if you can tell if you are moving down or up, or moving at all. Same thing only on a much larger scale. We don't feel the earth rotating or moving through space. The video I posted about Kittinger he talks about not being able to tell if he was moving or not. Then he goes back down and sees the balloon rushing away from him and his first instinct was he thought it was moving up. Then rational thought kicked in and he realized it was him rushing down away from the balloon.

I'm second in line if Formula Matt decides he doesn't want it. Not in town but I can pay-pal you the money and come pick it up when I get back into town (2 weeks).

Lulz, it does me too, but it's not the heights. I'm kind of short and there is something weird about shitting with your feet not fully on the ground for support.

1) I'm a little bit of a space nerd and nerd in general. 2) Lots of schooling and other reading, and I really don't know that much. I took advanced physics in mechanics and E&M in high school. I have my undergrad in electrical engineering, which requires quite a bit of physics, but I feel I have an aptitude leaning more towards mechanical engineering and physics. I almost got a 'secondary' degree in Physics, but would have had to take too many classes at home in the summer to get out in 4 years so I opted to do a minor. Looking back I still wish I could have somehow stayed in long enough to also get an ME degree and finish my secondary physics degree. Would have probably needed 2 more years though and that wasn't realistic at the time.

Did you expect it to have as much action as (I assume) Battlestar had? My understand is it's the story of what lead to the 'downfall', everything would probably relatively OK at the beginning.

Well for one it's not going to be a situation where all of the sudden there is air where there wasn't air. He will, relatively speaking, gradually see more and more air and be slowed down. Also like I said in my last post, I imagine before he get's too far into the atmosphere he will deploy his chute. EDIT: It appears some of my assumptions are wrong, since Kittinger deployed his chute around 18kft. I think it's mostly the first part of my thinking, that he will gradually see more and more air slowing him down 'gradually'. You can see from this that he's not really that high up in the grand scheme of things and won't really experience a reentry on the scale of an object coming from outer space. For reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry Granted these are in the category of 'most difficult reentries', it gives you an idea of the scale of speed and height a typical 'reentry' event occurs.

I'm not a huge dork about it, but definitely get into it sometimes. Caught a piece of Caprica a few days ago and watched the first 2 episodes online today, think I'm going to start DVRing it. Anyone else watch this show? I'm going to assume if you do, then you probably watched Battelstar. Anyone have them on DVD they can lend me to watch? I'm really liking the base idea of this show because I've read a little into the singularity concept. I also think this will be the decade of robotics. We will see usable robots i.e. 'autonomous' workers like ASIMO and probably some very realistic prosthetics. Though, I don't think we will see AI or anything even resembling it for at least a few more years.

I said gawddd dammnnn. I bet that sounded like music.

An object hits terminal velocity on earth due to the force of drag from the air being the same as force of gravity accelerating the object, but obviously in opposite directions. Think of it like the top speed of your car. Lets ignore gearing and non-uniform power curve for a second (which withing a window of speed you basically can). As you get closer and closer to the top speed, the car accelerates slower and slower due to the drag being greater and greater. The same thing is happening when an object is in free fall and hits terminal velocity. At 0 speed there is no drag from air and the object accelerates quickly. Neglecting differences in gravity due to distance from the center of the earth, gravity accelerates uniformly, reardless of weight or size (if you ignore wind resistance). A feather will fall as fast as a book in a vacuum (I hope you've had a basics physics class and this example was shown). As the object goes faster the drag exponentially increases until gravity can no longer overcome that drag from the air. That's the objects terminal velocity. In space there is zero air. They are in subspace so there is very little air, but there is still a good amount of gravity to rip them back to earth. So there is no such thing as terminal velocity, or if there is, it's much faster than here where the air is much thicker. Do you remember in Alien at the beginning of the movie when they are out exploring the planet and it is dead silent? That planet had no atmosphere, therefore no air (or some other gas) to propagate the sound. That was also why I said this new jumper will go faster than the speed of sound, but not break the sound barrier. Again for sound to propagate, and a sound barrier to be there to break, some medium (gas, air) needs to be there. So since there is almost no air where this new guy will be going that fast, they will not break the sound barrier. I'm just assuming he will slow himself via a chute before he get's into the atmosphere because I don't think we could make a suit right now that could withstand full speed re-entry heat/forces. I've not read this to verify the correctness, but I'll assume it's at least ok. More reading if you want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity

I was thinking adding a few cameras in there would be a good idea too.

I was mistaken, Kittenger did not hit the speed of sound. He only hit 614mph, so this new jumper will be the first to hit the speed of sound.

The video I posted said it took Kittinger an hour and a half.

If by you, you mean the general you, as in why they thought of it the first time, the simple answer is space. IIRC their primary goal was to see the effects of space on the human body (if you watch the video I posted it was in 1964, i.e. during the space race and 5 years before we put a man on the moon). They probably had some other experiments on the balloon also. EDIT: Found this article, I recalled the date from Kittingers jump incorrectly (it was 1960). http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Article/What-is-Red-Bull-Stratos--021242810683717?p=1242745950183

Thinking more about it, I think it was some argument about the technicality of it being the fastest or longest free fall. You can see he seems to have no control at the beginning of the fall. That's the interesting thing, I think. I was thinking about before I watched the video I posted and It touches on it, he didn't break the sound barrier. He went faster than the speed of sound on earth, but in space, so therefore technically didn't break the sound barrier. There's little to no air, so he can't break the sound barrier. Look at what it takes to break the sound barrier in a vehicle in our autmosphere. IIRC the first planes that came near it were ripped apart. He would need much more than a pressure suit to not be ripped apart while approaching the speed of sound (on earth). There are massive forces that happen to an object as it approaches the sound barrier. He still went faster than 768mph, not in a vehicle. That's just astounding.

This is a more explanatory video, imho.

Yeah, that guy is one BAMF too. I had read about and seen some video his dives in the past when looking into sky diving. The article I posted touches on it, but he had a hole in his suit, in subspace. The vacuum was trying to suck his hand out of his suit, that's why his hand swelled up on the way down. That situation (hole in the suit) was supposed to be an automatic mission abort, he knew it was happening and didn't tell control so he could complete the jump. IIRC people aruge whether he was in free fall becuase he was using a drag chute for stabilization. He needed that due to being in subspace, therefore less air, meaning decreased drag leading to not being able to control from simple body control.

http://gizmodo.com/5454895/man-to-break-sound-barrier-jumping-from-edge-of-space

I have (or maybe used to have...) one out of a fire alarm cover. That was one loud SOB. If you can wait 2 weeks (lulz), I'll be back home and can look for it. Though I think I threw it away a while ago. We made a game back in college called the wheel of intoxication with it. We made a spinning wheel with nails to hit a trigger that made the horn beep like the wheel of fortune. We had to cover it up with a few layers of tape to quiet it down enough to be bearable. Every spot had something you had to do, or a drink amount. Lots of fun, lots of naked people from that game (we had some 'good' rules). Why a piezoelectric specifically, looking for as loud and small as you can get? Like Christian, I'm interested in seeing what you want to do with it.

http://imcdb.org/images/010/174.jpg Ohhhh, i vant onve, i vant onve!

I'm remembering something about 24 cans/bottles or more. i.e. if you had a case, someone drank one and you had those 23 beers in the car it's not an open container. I can't recall for sure where or how I heard that, so don't quote me on it. Regardless of what it is, legal or illegal amounts, you would probably be best served to have it in your trunk. A reasonable police officer won't give you any issues about a reasonable amount, even if technically illegal, if it's in your trunk. So if I buy a 6 pack (of bottles so inherently 'open') from the store and am driving home with it, that's open container? I know in college one time we called the local police and asked them about carrying around a partially emptied keg (moving it from one house to another). They said as long as it's not taped we were fine (with that particular cop), so we did it and had no problems. Although I don't think we passed by any cops either. Why not call the local or sate police? Pretty easy way to settle the 'argument' and put your mind at ease. I don't get the big deal about open container. Either you are drunk or you are not. Drinking 1 beer in a car doesn't make you a drunk driver. Drinking no beer in a car doesn't make you a sober driver.

Yeah, I thought about point that out. I was trying to figure out who he was listening to in the original thread about this date? Me and Eli can hang out together, it's cool.

I'd be much more proud of that head stone than "Here Lies Austin who died of old age because he sat in a house all day" And I doubt that would happen to me either. Proof? I've watched every Man Versus Nature.