Red Bull Stratos

[SouthCarolinaSooner]

Guy is attempting a 120-130,000 ft skydive, previous record is 102,000. His team expects him to become the first person to break the sound barrier solely with his body....and its on live internet!

Great coverage here: http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/

EDIT: he's austrian so no american heroes will be lost today

[trwxxa]

Crazy MoFo.

[Skysooner]

That was incredible to watch.

[cleller]

I'dbeen following this, and am glad he pulled it off. The most interesting thing to me is that he had a handfull of records to break at one time:
Highest jump, highest manned ballon flight, fastest freefall speed, first supersonic skydive, and longest freefall.

Most of these were set by the USAF's Joe Kittinger in the previous record jump in 1960. Watching the video, Baumgartner knocks off all the records escept the longest freefall, it appears. Kittinger's record was 4:36, I believe, and it looked like Baumgartner pulled his chute at 4:22. It appeared he could have waited much longer. I hope this was intentional on Baumgartner's part, leaving Kittinger one of the records. It would be a class move.
Baumgartner was the only challenger that Kittinger felt was sophisticated enough to pull this off, and had offered advice.

[SouthCarolinaSooner]

I'dbeen following this, and am glad he pulled it off. The most interesting thing to me is that he had a handfull of records to break at one time:
Highest jump, highest manned ballon flight, fastest freefall speed, first supersonic skydive, and longest freefall.

Most of these were set by the USAF's Joe Kittinger in the previous record jump in 1960. Watching the video, Baumgartner knocks off all the records escept the longest freefall, it appears. Kittinger's record was 4:36, I believe, and it looked like Baumgartner pulled his chute at 4:22. I hope this was intentional on Baumgartner's part, leaving Kittinger one of the records. It would be a class move.
Baumgartner was the only challenger that Kittinger felt was sophisticated enough to pull this off, and had offered advice.
Kittinger was also the man in communication with Baumgartner most frequently throughout the mission. I think that Baumgartner was still aiming for longest freefall, and that his parachute deployed automatically at a certain altitude but I'm not sure. The 14 second differential could be a function of Baumgartner attaining higher speeds than predicted, but that's all speculation from me.

[cleller]

Here's a link with several videos now that its done. It looks like jumping out of a space capsule. Incredible. With the spacesuit he was wearing, having the chute deploy automatically makes a lot of sense. But I'm still hoping Baumgartner intentionally left one record for his mentor. Even with the backing of the USAF, pulling that off in 1960 was manly in the first degree.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9608140/Felix-Baumgartner-watch-the-jump.html

[C&CDean]

Very cool, but doing what Kittinger did way back when I was 3-years old is nothing short of miraculous. 52 years ago technology? Hell, we didn't have microwaves/vcr's/computers/cell phones/lcd/led/and barely had color TV. That dude had some cajones of titanium. Or else he was plumb dumb.

[StoopTroup]

I was watching the other day when they cancelled. I'm bummed I didn't get to see him do it as I've been watching pretty closely until they cancelled.

Glad he pulled it off. They say he has really helped NASA in the development of future flight suits that might be required in Emergency Situations during re-entry. I think this is awesome.

Crazy as hell but very awesome. I don't think he was dumb. They had a lot of pretty smart folks putting it all together. Red Bull definitely has found a way to promote their products and fund some very cool human Stunts. Around the World you don't see a lot of other Companies doing it. America is awesome and so is Red Bull. I'm gonna buy a 6 pack for this one.

http://www.redbullstratos.com/

http://www.youtube.com/redbull


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I&feature=plcp

[SouthCarolinaSooner]

Very cool, but doing what Kittinger did way back when I was 3-years old is nothing short of miraculous. 52 years ago technology? Hell, we didn't have microwaves/vcr's/computers/cell phones/lcd/led/and barely had color TV. That dude had some cajones of titanium. Or else he was plumb dumb.
I think this is dead on, he's got some cajones of titanium and he's plain dumb. Did you hear when they were talking about how he had rips in his pressure suit and knew it, but didn't tell the ground crew cause he just wanted to get on with it? Caused his hand to double in size during the dive..crazy bastard.

This suit doesn't look like anything compared to Bumgartner's

http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/joe-kittinger-jump.jpg

[StoopTroup]

I think crazy is when you do it like Kittinger from 76,000 feet and it's nearly a disaster and your response is to do it again 3 weeks later.

The final jump...knowing he had pain in his right glove he jumped anyway. If anything they are both quite alike.


The third and final test, Excelsior III, was made on August 16, 1960. During the ascent, the pressure seal in Kittinger's right glove failed, and he began to experience severe pain in his right hand from the exposure of his hand to the extreme low pressure. (See Effects of vacuum on humans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Effects_on_humans_and_animals).) He decided not to inform the ground crew about this, in case they should decide to abort the test. Despite temporarily losing the use of his right hand, he continued with the ascent, climbing to an altitude of 102,800 feet (31,333 m). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excelsior#cite_note-Hampton-1) The ascent took one hour and 31 minutes and broke the previous manned balloon altitude record of 101,516 feet (30,942 m), which was set by Major David Simons as part of Project Manhigh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Manhigh) in 1957. Kittinger stayed at peak altitude for 12 minutes, waiting for the balloon to drift over the landing target area. He then stepped out of the gondola to begin his descent.