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Exploration

Red Bull Stratos Jump Successful

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 14, 2012
Filed under

Red Bull Stratos: Mission Accomplished (with photos)
“Austria’s Felix Baumgartner earned his place in the history books on Sunday after overcoming concerns with the power for his visor heater that impaired his vision and nearly jeopardized the mission. Baumgartner reached an estimated speed of 1,342.8 km/h (Mach 1.24) jumping from the stratosphere, which when certified will make him the first man to break the speed of sound in freefall and set several other records while delivering valuable data for future space exploration.”
Status Reports
Keith’s note: The non-proft organization Quest for Stars has simultaneously launched a high altitude balloon that sent back live images of Felix Baumgartner’s ascent. More information here.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

42 responses to “Red Bull Stratos Jump Successful”

  1. JimNobles says:
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    Felix just reported that his visor/face heater isn’t working.   That’s not good.

  2. meekGee says:
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    my 2c:  this is the most inconsequential irrelevant and silly envelope pushing ever.  

    My prediction:  He’s going to head downwards, and will arrive at land.

    But hey, it’s pretty, and I’m’ watching…

  3. Steve Pemberton says:
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    For over fifty years we have seen the photograph of Joe Kittinger beginning his record freefall, the sense of awe never going away no matter how many times you look at it.  Certainly we will remember today with the same sense of awe, as we watched that tiny speck twisting and turning as it plummeted at supersonic speed.

    I was thinking how we have Yuri’s night every April 12th, which celebrates both Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space, as well as the first flight of the Space Shuttle exactly twenty years later to the day.  How about now also having Yeager’s night every October 14th, celebrating Chuck Yeager’s flight breaking the sound barrier, as well as Felix Baumgartner becoming the first human to break the sound barrier in freefall exactly sixty-five years later to the day.

    • Brian Campbell says:
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      I was thinking the samething, for celebrating Chuck’s accomplishment.  Although rather than sipping wine or vodka for this event, we should make this a good ol’American blue-coller style:
      Let’s have a “Yeager Kegger!!”

    • hikingmike says:
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       With all the clouds it makes me wonder if he opened his chute before them or after? He still holds the longest freefall so I’m not sure. Man, I’d prefer the cloudless New Mexico sky for this kind of thing.

  4. Andrew Gasser says:
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    Will have to drink a RedBull.

    Yay Capitalism!

  5. Anonymous says:
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    Did anyone else make the mistake of thinking CNN was going to show this live?  

    • Anonymous says:
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      They should be totally trashed for that abysmal bit of censorship.  I guess they were afraid our poor little eyeballs would be offended if anything bad happened.  They even cut away just before his feet touched the ground, in case he sprained his ankle we wouldn’t have to watch it.  Completely unacceptable.  

      • kcowing says:
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        “Censorship”?  CNN did not “censor” anything. FWIW I saw large portions of the mission throughout the day  – live – on CNN.

        • Anonymous says:
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          FWIW you obviously did not watch the free fall on CNN because it was not shown live.  CNN cut away moments  after he jumped for what they claimed were ‘for obvious reasons’.  If that isn’t censorship what do you call it?

          • kcowing says:
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            I had CNN and the webcast on at the same time. They showed the jump and then cut away and then went back to it. Their choice to cut away and then back was not “censorship” since anyone could see it on the live webcast (apparently one of the largest ever). CNN was also covering another breaking story – the death of Sen. Arlen Specter. But you’ve clearly already made up your mind, haven’t you?

          • Anonymous says:
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            Keith, not everyone has web access. The N in CNN is for news. This was news. They should not have cut away.

          • nasa817 says:
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            CNN cut the feed right before he jumped.  I watched until 10 minutes after they were showing him walking around on the ground and they never showed the jump in that timeframe.  I switched it off at that point.  I went online and the live stream was unavailable, there were 8 million + watching it already.  I was very disappointed that CNN would not show it live “for obvious reasons” as the woman stated.  CNN(HD) did not show him jump from the platform, at least not in central FL.

          • Chris Holmes says:
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            There were no editorial cutaways on Discovery Channel.  Discovery aired the entire event from start to finish and we saw the complete depressurization checklist, the bunny hop, the fall and the infrared tracking.  And it was pretty vivid watching Felix go into a flat spin for a short period, then stabilize as he hit more dense air.  CNN may have cut away from the event, but it was more likely because of Discovery’s ownership of the rights as opposed to censorship.
             

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            I think Chris Holmes probably hit the nail on the head.  In my experience, Discovery Channel is a total Scrooge when it comes to ownership.  They wouldn’t share a glass of water with a man dying in the desert heat if they owned the rights to that water.

            Steve

    • Marc Boucher says:
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      Interesting, in Canada it was broadcast live on Sportnet which is similar to ESPN. It was great.

  6. Helen Simpson says:
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    This is a brave accomplishment. But beyond that …

    I react to this in the same way that I reacted to Evel Knievel trying to jump over the Snake River.  Pretty cool. Pretty courageous. But beyond that? Why? Was this for science, as they’re saying? Eh, blather. If you want to understand the stresses a human body would get in a fall like this, just drop an instrumented probe. If you want to see how survivable such a fall like this is, just put a monkey in suit and pitch it out.

    For goodness sake, Stratos team, this is being done to build the image of the daring as ones who drink (or perhaps just think about drinking) Red Bull. I guess Red Bull is supposed to make you think about energy and extreme courage. One can contrast that with human space flight, for which at least lately the relevant drink is Kool Aid. As to the actual effect of Red Bull on the human body, I gather it isn’t much different than caffeinated Kool Aid.

    To the extent that Red Bull is lightly carbonated, I suspect that Felix wouldn’t touch the stuff before doing such a pressure sensitive feat. But maybe they’ll dump a bucket of it over his head when he returns.

    There are few lessons from this that apply to human space flight, except that you can be declared a hero for simply putting your life at risk.

    • kcowing says:
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      “Eh blather”?  You clearly haven’t stopped to pay attention to what was actually accomplished. The suit they created for this jump did not exist until they designed it. NASA did not have a suit capable of this feat. It still doesn’t since they declined the offer to participate. This project helps push the envelope in terms of high altitude bailouts something of potential value to NASA. Also, no one knew exactly what would happen to a suited human body as it broke the sound barrier. Now, with the data gathered, they do. That’s called science.

      • Helen Simpson says:
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        Sorry, but what you’re talking about is engineering. It’s great engineering, but it’s not science. The question of whether the engineering is good enough to ensure survival is perhaps of importance, but it isn’t science. The issue I’m raising is not whether it is of value, but whether it can credibly be called science.

        As to what happens “to a human body when it breaks the sound barrier”, this body was encased in a flexible suit (as opposed to a stiff suit like a capsule or airframe). The “body” didn’t “break” anything. Now, it might be interesting to know what happens to human flesh when exposed to transsonic flows (I suspect it wouldn’t be pretty). That could, I suppose, be spun as medical science.

        If you taught suit manufacture in school, it wouldn’t be in a “science” department. Not in any accredited school. If you taught students about shielding humans from supersonic flow, it wouldn’t be in a “science” department.

        This, I’m afraid, is how ISS might be getting turned into a “science” lab. By redefining science.

        Baumgartner did some mighty impressive stuff. But it wasn’t science.

        • kcowing says:
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          As a space biologist having actually worked at NASA, I just gotta say that there as much medical “science” as there is “engineering” in this. Just go pull a copy of the scientific journal published by the Aerospace Medical Association – at random – from any point in the past 20-40 years – and you will see that things like this have been the subject of ‘scientific’ research for decades. You are just plain wrong on this.

          • Helen Simpson says:
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            As you like. But then, what academic department in a College of Arts and Sciences do I look for “pressure suit manufacture” in? Maybe practical kinesiology? No, you won’t find it in a medical school either.

            As to “medical science”, diving out of a balloon and seeing if you survive is not a scientific approach to the effects of altitude and high velocities on the human body. I’d like to see effects as a function of variables.

            Again, this is good stuff, but classifying it as science is like crashing your car into a brick wall to do a science experiment on the extent to which your seat belt keeps you alive. “Yep”, or “nope” doesn’t make science.

            A lot of space biology is done in concert with engineering innovations. But one is not the other.  Putting Curiosity on Mars wasn’t science. Putting Curiosity on Mars was in order to do science.

          • kcowing says:
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            You clearly have zero idea as to how aerospace or environmental medicine has been conducted over the past century. You’ve also apparently never heard of test pilots or research subjects. Someone had to be the first person to fly in a pressure suit – and the way that their body reacted to that exposure and how well the suit did/did not function is clearly a blend of experimental and applied physiology. Same goes for rocket flight, prolonged zero G exposure, ejection seats, saturation diving, high altitude mountaineering, etc. You have already made up your mind on this, so further posts by you are pointless.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Helen,

            I think you need to learn the art of graceful surrender.  News Flash!  You are not always right.

            This whole discussion seems pointless to me, because the lines between various scientific disciplines have been blurring more and more for decades now.  Same for Engineering.  While specialists are a necessity, straight-jacketing any project by confining it to a single discipline rarely leads to progress in many fields.  Cross-discipline investigations are proving far more progressive.

            Even at the higher levels things are multi-disciplined; you can’t explain certain things in basic chemistry without referring to particle physics (e.g., why doesn’t a nucleus fly apart from the electrical repulsion of the protons?  Without the residual strong force, you can’t explain that.)

            Or,  let’s agree to disagree and drop it.

            Steve

          • Rusty says:
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            Please go away.  I’m sick of reading yoru comments.

        • npng says:
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          Helen, I’ve read all of your posts over the last year and it’s quite clear you are fastidious in your efforts to write clearly and succinctly. But with all of your posts on this topic, your plain logic reads in a scattered, disjointed way.  Your analogies here are marginal at best, but mostly horrid.  I read them over and over trying to make sense out of them and they don’t hold water.

          What do you mean by: “This, I’m afraid, is how ISS might be getting turned into a “science” lab. By redefining science.” ?

          To suggest that ISS science activities somehow get “turned into” or “redefined” by Felix’s activity is a rather bizarre stretch, isn’t it?   If you see the ISS science being redefined, using examples, tell us how that is going to occur. 

          Away from the Mach plus Felix topic, could you explain what your definition of “science” is?  And THEN, if you can frame the science definition clearly, take a shot at why Flying Felix is away from proper science or fails it.

          My sense is that your view is that pure science is the holy grail and that Felix’s effort was cool but goofy, that it’s too engineering, too pragmatic, too much real field trial activity.  As though field testing and engineering suck and that only pure science has merit.

          You need to call the University of North Dakota and tell the faculty that works on space suit designs that they can’t possibly have a curriculum to design space suits or pressure suits (and don’t split hairs on the pressure suit definitions); might as well call the commercial (underwater) diving firms and universities with those curriculums too.   Oh, call all of the major auto manufacturers too and safety agencies and tell them to stop crashing cars and making test dummies too, tell them those yes / no tests have been wasting milions of dollars because it’s not your definition of science.

          Also, I’m glad you pointed out “A lot of space biology is done in concert with engineering innovations. But one is not the other. Putting Curiosity on Mars wasn’t science. Putting Curiosity on Mars was in order to do science.”  Well, you’re right.  Putting Curosity on Mars was engineering, in a major way.  Although there were surely 500 science efforts that led to design and engineering to get the job done. 

          From your comments it seems that if you had all of the Red Bull Stratos team’s money and manpower, you’d have spent it differently.  So, what would you have spent it doing?

        • Anonymous says:
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          Science begets engineering and engineering enables science. Taken together they produce technology that in turn generates benefits and economic activity. This cycle will be a key part of the US’s future in space.

          Attempts to separate these components does not lead to an optimal plan going forward.

    • Robin Seibel says:
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      Two points:

      1.  Red Bull wasn’t the entity that came up with this idea.  Felix is the one who had the idea, and Red Bull joined up when Felix went looking for sponsors.  Note that given the expense–gondola, suit, weather balloon, required gasses, support equipment…..–this wasn’t something that could be paid for by an individual unless that individual happened to be someone like Richard Branson.

      2.  No instrumented dummy or monkey could have accomplished this.  If you’ve never been skydiving, then you don’t understand that it takes little motion from your control surfaces–arms and legs–to initiate movement in a given direction.  I doubt that either a monkey or a dummy would be able to make the motions necessary to maintain stability, to fall in the correct orientation, and to specifically prevent flat spins.

      As it was, Felix had to counter the beginning of a flat spin, and it’s apparent from his statements after his landing that correcting that slowly developing flat spin was not trivial.  That should hardly be surprise given how bulky his suit was (and any suit likely would be) and how it limited his motion.

      I certainly doubt that Felix was looking to be a hero.  Other skydivers have been interested in doing the same thing.  I think it’s normal for humans to breakthrough barriers and do what no one else has done.

      Felix has accomplished a great thing. We don’t know what advancements this might lead to, but to dismiss the accomplishment is to possibly prevent useful applications later.

      Blue skies, Felix.

      • Helen Simpson says:
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        As I said. Pretty cool. Pretty courageous. I admire him greatly.

        As to dummies and monkeys, I don’t care about using control surfaces. The question needs to be answered whether a human being, who has exited an upper stratospheric vehicle, needs special aerodynamic training to survive. Is stability necessary for survival? I’d think that if you figure out how to keep a monkey alive, you can keep anyone alive. Perhaps the suit should be designed in such a way that trained aerodynamic control isn’t necessary. Perhaps we’re talking a drogue chute.

        But Baumgartner WANTED to go faster than Mach 1. He didn’t want a drogue chute. That was a large part of his aerodynamic challenge. He wanted to do something that someone falling out of a space vehicle would never want to do.

        If we’re talking practical knowledge that might be useful for human space flight, the issue is survival. Not turning someone into a skydiver.

        • Chris Holmes says:
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          I’m reluctant to engage in any conversation with you, Helen, because it seems you know more than most people here, many of whom have a lot of letters at the end of their names and practical experience as well. Or at least you portray yourself that way.

          But in the interest of just plain fun, I’m wondering if you had ever considered the high abort mode?  High abort, meaning as if a spacecraft suddenly lost power during launch, and structural integrity?  Or on reentry, if that same spacecraft were to lose aerodynamic control?  What would the humans inside that spacecraft have available to them to survive?  What abort modes would they have then? 

          That’s one question that this type of experiment would serve to answer. And yes, this event happened because Felix wanted to be there and Red Bull wanted to sell more drinks – but don’t discount the genuine question of what might be possible.  Nobody knew what might happen from that altitude, so there was value in the event.  The next question becomes, from what altitude can a suited human survive if an abort to/from orbit occurs?  And if it’s survivable, how do you accomplish that?  You can’t do those experiments easily and without human subjects. 

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Not forgetting of course that an orbiting astronaut has a bit of delta-v with respect to the ground?

            When I was a kid, knowledge about exactly what would happen to the human body in extreme environments was scarce, leading to now-seeming outlandish questions. Some wondered if food would move from the mouth to the stomach, for example. And remember those incredible sled-decel tests they did in the 50’s? Taking guys from high speed to zero in a few feet by means of a water break?

            On Science or engineering…dunno. I see the difference, but I also see today that a couple of scientists have managed to image oxygen atoms leaving complex molecules by means of attosecond pulses. I’m thinking that there was an awful lot of ‘engineering’ that went into making that experiment work.

          • Chris Holmes says:
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            msa; you’re right about handling the delta-v.  I think one of the reasons Laurel Clark’s husband is involved is because of the heating and dynamics question.  That, and limited amount of O2 in what was then called the shuttle PEAP is also a factor.  You need to get down quickly, but with how much heating can a suit (and the human inside!) take and how early/late can you open a canopy? And that’s why testing something like this to see where the survivability envelope is valuable. 

      • meekGee says:
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        meh.

        If this was about science only, they’d have dropped an instrument bag.  No need for a capsule, and no need for all this to-do with the giant balloon.

        If this was about high-altitude bail-out and human re-entry, then the assumption is that a) the egress is happening at supersonic speeds, and b) that the astronaut is not in perfect health, so you can’t really rely on his skills – it has to be a passive system.

        A drogue chute, for example, would take the human skill out of the equation, but would be less fun and less record-breaking, which was the point of this stunt.

        No need to color this anything beyond what it was – a fun exercise in one-upmanship.

        • kcowing says:
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          As is the case with Helen, you too lack an understanding of aerospace physiology and operational medicine as they relate to one another and aerospace engineering.

          • meekGee says:
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            Oh, this has more to do with experiment design than with physiology, and so I am not exactly clueless….

            The set up is all wrong if they intended to do science. Back in the 60’s a pair of SR-71 pilots had their plane disintegrate around them. Not quite as high, but going over 3 times the speed of sound. One had his neck broken and died. The other was knocked out for most of the fall, and the automatic system (drogue chute, main chute) functioned well and brought him safely to the ground.

            In this case, the team did everything in order to make the jump unlike a real situation – a fully able stuntman, wearing gear that is intentionally unstable just so he can go fast, jumps from a perfectly still capsule….

            Nah. It was a stunt, with some show-off science strapped to it, very weakly.

    • tutiger87 says:
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      Just like with robots…sooner or later a human will have to do it. Give the man his due.

      And there is a lot this can give to spaceflight. All we talked about at work after Columbia was “Could they have had a chance?” Certainly the thermal environment is a MAJOR consideration, but the first question:Could a man bailout that high?” has been answered thanks to Red Bull Stratos. Any other study will build upon the basic fact that he did this and lived.

  7. John Spasojevich says:
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    It was carried live on the Discovery Channel…..

  8. thebigMoose says:
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    It was great to watch, and it pushed the envelope, no doubt about that.  Trivial question, but did they ever launch the landing smoke generator that he requested?  I was a bit dismayed that “mission control” messed up the wind direction to him on radio… sometimes a mistake like that can have consequences.  Congrats to Felix and the team.

    • Zed_WEASEL says:
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      Yes they lay down smoke (actually smoke grenade) from one of the recovery helicopters. Wasn’t shown in the TV coverage. Baumgartner would land pass the smoke marker taking wind direction cues from the smoke trail. Presumably his helmet visor was clear of frost by then.

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      During the press conference they said they did put out smoke, Felix was asked if he saw any smoke and he answered “Oh yeah, a lot”

  9. Anonymous says:
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    Amazing. I haven’t read all the articles or seen all the photos and vids but what impresses me the most is all the logistics and planning to make this happen. So many things can go wrong, i.e. wind gusts scrubbing launch, equipment breakdowns, etc. Everyone really needs to learn patience and not succumb to being schedule driven (many space/aviation disasters were result of schedule driven decision making, i.e. Challenger and Soyus 1). The infrastructure that had to be built is a major accomplishment itself. And jumping from 128K in a spacesuit is very interesting because 128,000 ft is really not that high in comparison with size of earth, our habital atmosphere is really thin. Vids and pics are simply amazing, we see much of the same from unmanned balloons but there’s just something about when a person is there. I think it was so cool Joe Kittinger is still around to see his record broken and got to serve as Capcom. 

    For everyone else trying to figure out the business reasons and why, my reaction is this country (USA) needs to get its mojo back to being innovative and trying new stuff. Nowadays we treat everything like a vending machine where you put money in and expect something out RIGHT NOW. Argument should not be about Red Bull products or money well spent or wasted (take your pick), it should be what does it take to do stuff like this? Anything better or not on pressure suit design? Radio, video, and data comms? Balloon material such as any other methods to do fills that are not so vunerable to winds? What are the unknown ‘unknowns?’ Then for the rest of us watching, what is best way? Television (choosing a channel that will not cut off just before Felix steps off the balloon)? Or internet streaming from the source but dealing with throughput issues? What is best technology for providing reliable method for having millions watch something live?

    When balloon kept ascending beyond 125K, I was thinking Felix better hurry up because at that altitude the UV is very harsh and will quickly breakdown the balloon material. i.e. difficult to have an extreme altitude floater as many ham radio people experience when balloon is buoyant above 100K, it doesn’t stay there very long. I’m sure Stratos team considered this along with a million other things. It all makes for interesting reading for the next weeks, months, years to come.

  10. Saturn1300 says:
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    They did have an automatic system that if the G’s got too high,a drogue would deploy.It may have been a good thing,the spin.I have seen a video of Soyuz coming down and the vapor trail from venting fuel is corkscrewing.That may be the reason that Soyuz lands with such a small amount of damage.That was a pretty landing.If Dragon and CST-100 had a few reels they could land like that.I tell my RC students to get that nose up and land like USAF,not Navy.Got to look pretty.Interesting that he did not break the record for the longest time of free-fall.Trying to break the speed record maybe.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      dude! 

      see that really big key at the bottom middle of your keyboard?

      It’s a spacebar! Who knew that it could make reading your posts so much easier! 

      🙂