SpaceGhost Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 For those that have not seen this on the Discovery channel. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/42263/the_speed_of_sound/ The camera shot with him falling away from it is insane. How could you just jump? Captain Joseph Kittinger has the biggest balls ever hung from a human being. There has been a rumor that some dude plans on beating his record. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Total Sign Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 Wow. Very cool, being able to see the curvature (sp) of the earth had to make him wonder why he did not turn the job down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedline Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 that was awesome. great find!!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farkas Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 that's almost scary to think about.. I bet it was so hard for him to breathe at that altitude and imagine how SOL he would have been if he tried to jump out of the balloon and he wasn't falling.. instead he was slowly floating into outer space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceGhost Posted July 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 that's almost scary to think about.. I bet it was so hard for him to breathe at that altitude and imagine how SOL he would have been if he tried to jump out of the balloon and he wasn't falling.. instead he was slowly floating into outer space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evan9381 Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 from that altitude, id be extremely happy i hit a continent and they were able to find me... GPS didnt exist in 1960, im sure (or did it??) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally Pat Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 in the 60's, the closest thing to GPS would be a ham radio on one end with a transponder on the other that beeped regularly. GPS didnt become mainstream till the early 80's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mowgli1647545497 Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 Burning up comes from slowing down from orbital velocity due to friction with the atmosphere. He was geosyncronous, or relatively geosyncronous. Meaning he was being held aloft relatively stationary by the balloon and not the centrifugal force of orbitting. Understand to attain enough speed to achieve a stable orbit requires a ton of velocity. Its one of the reasons the shuttle and other launches happen as close to the equator and launch out eastward - to get the added benefit of the rotation of the earth added in. His 900mph falling straight down is nowhere near hot enough to burn. When the shuttle or other orbital or extra-orbital craft comes into the atmosphere they're going on the order of Mach 25 and higher. More than twenty-five times what he was traveling. BTW- he wasn't in space. The boundary of what is and is not space is call the Karman Line and is around 62miles up. But even from watching the film even though it looks "spacey", if you stop to think about it you'll see why he's not in space proper; the balloon was still creating bouyant lift. It can only create lift in atmosphere (gas) denser/heavier than it. This is impressive, but even more impressive is the feat of Gen Chuck Yeager, who coaxed an airplane, the production 1960s era military F-104 Starfighter (aptly named, natch) to a stall height higher than this. The plane crashed, but Chuck survived. Joe Walker holds the overall record at 107k ft, albeit in a specially prepared plane. That takes balls+skill. Riding an elevator and jumping out just takes balls. More balls than I have I'll admit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark1647545493 Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 "First man to break the speed of sound without an aircraft"! lol I thought GPS was around in the 60's but locked down to Military use only. Wasn't it opened up to public use in the 70's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mowgli1647545497 Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 GPS did not exist in the 60s The design of GPS is based partly on the similar ground-based radio navigation systems, such as LORAN developed in the early 1940s, and used during World War II. Additional inspiration for the GPS system came when the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik in 1957. A team of U.S. scientists led by Dr. Richard B. Kershner were monitoring Sputnik's radio transmissions. They discovered that, because of the Doppler effect, the frequency of the signal being transmitted by Sputnik was higher as the satellite approached, and lower as it continued away from them. They realized that since they knew their exact location on the globe, they could pinpoint where the satellite was along its orbit by measuring the Doppler distortion. The converse is also true: if the satellite's position were known, they could identify their own position on Earth. The first satellite navigation system, Transit, used by the United States Navy, was first successfully tested in 1960. Using a constellation of five satellites, it could provide a navigational fix approximately once per hour. In 1967, the U.S. Navy developed the Timation satellite which proved the ability to place accurate clocks in space, a technology the GPS system relies upon. In the 1970s, the ground-based Omega Navigation System, based on signal phase comparison, became the first world-wide radio navigation system. The first experimental Block-I GPS satellite was launched in February 1978.[5] The GPS satellites were initially manufactured by Rockwell International and are now manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maro Posted July 19, 2006 Report Share Posted July 19, 2006 Awesome find. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chief8one Posted July 20, 2006 Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 i would jump sure as hell wouldnt want to keep floating! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Science Abuse Posted July 20, 2006 Report Share Posted July 20, 2006 Mowgli saved me some writing. Danke "First man to break the speed of sound without an aircraft"! If I'm not mistaken, he did not actualy break the speed of sound. He reached terminal velocity, which in the thin atmosphere up there, is 900 something Kilometers an hour. At sea level, that is Mach 1, but up there, its just fast. The PSF exserted on his body at 900kmh up there would be the same as about 180kmh down here. He could breath because he had a significant oxygen supply with him....untill he jumped. Wow. Very cool, being able to see the curvature (sp) of the earth had to make him wonder why he did not turn the job down. That would have actualy reminded me of why I took the job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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