Jumping From The Edge of Space
Felix Baumgartner Makes Parachute Jump From 96,640 feet / 29,455 meters
“Today, July 25, 2012, Felix Baumgartner completed the final milestone remaining before he attempts to achieve his dream of becoming the first person to break the speed of sound in freefall. According to preliminary data, his test jump from a 5.3 million cubic-foot / 150,079 cubic-meter balloon achieved an altitude of over 96,640 feet / 29,455 meters, seeing Baumgartner execute a 3 minute, 48 second freefall jump reaching speeds of 536 mph / 862 kmh.”
As Neil Armstrong would say, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!”
There is a good article in the June/July 2012 Air & Space magazine outlining the background and meticulous planning that this person has been making. Worth looking up.
Significant event yet the sponsor; Red Bull had no live video coverage and what little updates they provided yesterday was few and far between. Hope during the next jump, Red Bull gets their act together and provide coverage!!
To be fair to Red Bull, this is not “the” event, this was the dress rehearsal and jump test for the main event that is in August or September when they actually make a run at the record. From the very outset Red Bull has ensured that this will be a very media friendly deal. Take a look at the capsule and how many HD cameras are all over the thing. Unless that lawsuit settlement (IIRC sued because a promoter says he has dibs on the idea of using a jump for PR/Advertising use–and that shut Stratos down for quite a while) keeps them from advertising the jump, I think it’ll be everywhere–assuming big media cares anymore. I barely saw any mainstream coverage of SS1’s suborbital flights.
Also…I would love to see the data from these jumps used in designing space diving suits (being developed by other companies currently) for emergency escape from orbit. I honestly don’t know why research didn’t continue much after Kittinger’s jumps.