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Sky Diving at the Speed of Sound watch!

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  • nahsrocketeer75, on 03/31/2008, -1/+45Yikes. I want to know if kissed his wife and kids good-bye before doing this jump. I mean he couldn't possibly have been 100% confident that he would survive.
    • cawpin, on 03/31/2008, -22/+2Gee, another dupe. Imagine that.

      Same exact video.
      http://digg.com/educational/Skydiving_from_100_000 ...

      Video of same event, also a dupe of the above
      http://digg.com/people/First_Man_in_Space_Skydivin ...
      • Dokument, on 03/31/2008, -1/+16and even on those submissions you can read this

        "shut up about the dupes... we know it was already submitted. It was good then and its still good now.

        Even though most of us have already seen it, theres alot of people that haven't seen it. Give them a chance."


        and i still agree
    • das7282, on 03/31/2008, -0/+27He actually had a suit malfunction during the flight and kept it a secret from the ground crew for fear they would scrap the jump. One of the seals on one of his gloves leaked and his hand was depressurized. He said it felt like his hand was blowing up like a balloon and when he finally made it down to earth (over 20 minutes later) his entire hand was black and blue.
    • robmcm, on 03/31/2008, -16/+3Same video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU
    • Verz, on 03/31/2008, -2/+3Yes, they send people into space without calculating the risk involved.
    • sanman, on 03/31/2008, -2/+4not "from space"

      it's
      "FROM SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!!"
  • rapcrap187, on 03/31/2008, -2/+93One of the most amazing feats that 99% of the population doesn't know about.
  • SmellyFingers, on 03/31/2008, -20/+5I hate Coldplay.
  • d1ckinabox, on 03/31/2008, -5/+47god that guy has balls
    epic
    ***** epic
    • RadiatedAnt, on 03/31/2008, -3/+5stfu with the epic already. You're beating a dead horse
      • dawgma, on 04/01/2008, -1/+3stfu with telling people certain popular memes are dead
    • Iconoclast25, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Roger that. I kept thinking those huge brass balls had to be increasing his re-entry speed. He and Alan Shepherd, if not the entire original astronaut group, should have special medals for courage. Surely every mission they undertook was potentially as dangerous as anything in live combat and unlike combat, they had time to reflect on these things rather than reacting from training and instinct. Not to disparage any hero, but conscious courage is at least an order of magnitude more rare than instinctive courage.

      /* salutes with deepest respect
  • Dokument, on 03/31/2008, -11/+11reminds me of that G.I Joe remake clip.... "sssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt"
  • corneliusJones, on 03/31/2008, -10/+4***** that took some enormous cohones
  • dasdef, on 03/31/2008, -13/+7i could do that i just dont wanna
  • justananomaly, on 03/31/2008, -12/+6In other words... speedy thing goes in... speedy thing comes out.
  • LiquidIse, on 03/31/2008, -10/+22Grapefruits.
    This man has two.
    • Impact0115, on 03/31/2008, -6/+0What the hell does grapefruit have to do with skydiving at the speed of sound?
      Let's stay on topic here.
  • and303, on 03/31/2008, -8/+1Now that takes some balls!
  • zaii7, on 03/31/2008, -5/+7that beats having a room full of hookers and a bathtub full of blow
    • Wargalas, on 03/31/2008, -1/+3I don't know, I've had one of those...you guess which one. :)
      • cerealjynx, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Hey now, dead hookers don't count.
      • rspeed, on 03/31/2008, -0/+5I've had a hooker full of blow. Does that count?
    • RetroMUFC, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1I may beat it, but not by much.
  • ArikSantiago, on 03/31/2008, -5/+7He must of been content with losing his life in space. Plus, that means he holds the record for the highest sky dive right? : )
  • cornfedbiff, on 03/31/2008, -6/+0How do I sign up?
  • Sepeteus, on 03/31/2008, -3/+17I want to try that at least once in my life.
    • TonyLocNE, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2My first time skydiving, I dove solo from 3000 feet and i thought that was a rush... never in my wildest could I imagine doing something like that even once in my life.

      "Skydiving, if at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you."
  • Quick2822, on 03/31/2008, -3/+6Damn, from that view, you'd think that he'd fall through the atmosphere. I mean, obviously he wasn't in space, but its amazing how far you can go up and still be under the Earth's atmosphere. Must have been frightening, but for that view, even for only a short time makes it all worth it.
    • yaddamaster, on 03/31/2008, -5/+2I'm assuming you meant - under earth's gravity, right? But then your second sentence still doesn't make sense with your first. He'd fall through the gravity? Either way, you're not making sense.

      What I don't remember is how far from earth you'd have to travel before the earth's gravitational pull is half.

      His free fall lasted around 4 minutes if I recall.
      • GliTCH82, on 04/01/2008, -0/+3Come on, man, it's not hard. He meant that the way the earth looked from that altitude, with the curvature and all and the completely black sky above him in broad daylight, you'd think that he was above the whole atmosphere, not actually in some part of it.
  • gnarizard, on 03/31/2008, -2/+30I half expecting him to just sort float off into space
    • Stonehenge360, on 03/31/2008, -2/+12that would only happen if he was in orbit - he was simply lifted by a balloon.

      However, the earth was rotating below him so he probabily landed on a different continent 0_o
      • Dokument, on 03/31/2008, -6/+1in soviet russia, cosmonauts asplode!! :(
      • yaddamaster, on 03/31/2008, -0/+7he wouldn't float off even if he was in orbit. He'd have to be travelling fast enough to achieve a stable orbit. His horizontal movement was negligible, if anything. Even if he went 4x higher than he was, he'd still have fallen back to earth.

        Atomosphere != gravity
      • Railz, on 03/31/2008, -1/+14Actually, though my astrophysics might be a little blurry, wouldn't his ascent have the same horizontal velocity as the earth as he was drifting up then falling down? give or take from air resistance on the x plane.
    • twishart, on 03/31/2008, -0/+21Yeah, it'd be a little creepy to jump off the balloon, and sort of go... up. Terrifying, actually.
    • DemDude, on 03/31/2008, -0/+9Seconds later, his last words were recorded.
      "Wel, *****..."
  • FireSlash, on 03/31/2008, -1/+2At such high altitudes, there's lower air density hence little friction, allowing him to fall so fast. It'd be fun as hell, but I'd hate to see the mess if your parachute fails.
    • Vapor17, on 03/31/2008, -0/+10it'd be the same mess as someone falling from normal sky-diving heights

      SCIENCE RULES!
    • Modiga, on 03/31/2008, -0/+5I don't think the mess would be any worse than the result of a normal parachuter's parachute failing. Sure in this case there are much faster speeds initially, due to the fact that thin air leads to little air resistance, but as he falls the air will get thicker, the amount of air resistance acting on him will increase and his velocity would slow to the same velocity as someone jumping from a much lower height.
      • haeber, on 04/01/2008, -1/+1Yeah, but then you have to deal with friction. With friction comes heat. Yum.
  • ffonsok, on 03/31/2008, -1/+8I learned about this off of a music video for an ambient music group from canada called "Boards of Canada" The video is a collection of clips from the documentary... very inspiring. This was the video that prompted me to go skydiving last fall. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrBZeWjGjl8

    Also, not sure if it says it in the clip because I'm in class without sound, but he actually blacked out the first time he did it and was saved by the auto-deploying parachute.
    • tmbrwolf19, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3Continuing on the free-fall / Boards of Canada / Dayvan Cowboy theme...
      Shuttle booster rocket camera synced with Dayvan Cowboy (amazing song): http://snm.imeem.com/video/qMFlJe6m/shuttle_liftof ...
    • FlimBlimmer, on 03/31/2008, -1/+5Boards of Canada aren't from Canada.
    • XHashmeerX, on 03/31/2008, -0/+4Dugg for "Boards of Canada." Beautiful music...
    • jamlarso, on 03/31/2008, -0/+4god! getting rick rolled has made me so ***** paranoid about clicking any link. im a nervous wreck!
      • ijacker, on 03/31/2008, -1/+1aye, its a slow and painful process, but things are looking up; uuiU is no longer there...
        i feel ya bro
  • WhatInThe42o, on 03/31/2008, -0/+5This may be silly, but I wonder if he felt anything when he broke the sound barrier. I've seen clips of airplanes holding just at the barrier, and they get this . . . cone of vapor around them (there's probably a term for that, but I don't know it). Seems that if your body was experiencing that, you may actually feel something at the moment you break the barrier. You know, other than the warmth in your pants as your bowels release.
    • Railz, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3No.

      1) There isn't enough of a medium for there to be sound that high up
      2) that cone of vapor can be from any high speed, depends on the atmosphere humidity at the time. You can see it on the Raptor Demonstration Videos when they do their demonstrations on the humid morning in Langley Air Force Base
      • WhatInThe42o, on 03/31/2008, -1/+1Awesome, thanks for the reply. That makes sense, that different speeds can create the 'cone' at different humidities. Are you sure about the lack of air density making transmission of sound impossible, though? I know that it doesn't take a full vacuum to disable sound, but I wonder just what the cut-off point is.
    • name2see, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2He actually didn't break the sound barrier. A quote from http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/ ...
      "He did reach a peak velocity of 614 mph (988 km/h), however, a mark that still stands as the fastest speed ever reached by a human without a vehicle. Though Kittinger fell short of supersonic speeds, he did get pretty close and achieved a maximum of about Mach 0.9, or 90% of the speed of sound."
      • WhatInThe42o, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3That's a good point . . . they say in the video that he reached a speed of 990 km/h, but the speed of sound at sea level is about 1230 km/h, according to the never wrong wikipedia. But, lower density equals faster sound wave propagation, so now I find myself wondering what the speed is in the rarified air of the upper atmosphere. Ah, I love it when a 2 minute video can lead to hours of research. Good ol' Discovery Channel!
  • nightstar, on 03/31/2008, -4/+1Back in the late 60's saw a special on testing human endurance. In the show was a clip where they got a test subject up to around 700 degrees. Yes he lived... No ill effects...
    • DemDude, on 03/31/2008, -0/+4You gotta be kidding, even if you're talking about degrees fahrenheit, that's almost 600 Kelvin, there's hardly any organism on earth that would surive that, and humans are not one of them.
      • DemDude, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2scratch that, it's more than 644 Kelvin, I first calculated it with 600°fahrenheit instead of 700. Even more lethal.
    • atchon, on 03/31/2008, -0/+4I hope he was in some sort of cooling suit otherwise there is no way. Any link?
  • TheConman, on 03/31/2008, -11/+1...so now we know you can go faster than the speed of sound, and einstein says we can't go faster than the speed of light... so who wants to volunteer to try to go faster than the speed of dark?
    • Impact0115, on 03/31/2008, -0/+6*cricket chirp*
    • kewalter, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Actually the speed of dark would be the same as the speed of light ;)
  • orlyfactor, on 03/31/2008, -3/+4Just saw this on BBC's The Power of Earth series over the weekend. Weird.
  • ba5e, on 03/31/2008, -2/+3wow that is one of the coolest things I have seen for a while! Why has no one else tried it since?? Or have they??
  • PixelMagic, on 03/31/2008, -9/+2This is 'shopped. I can tell by the pixels, and having seen a few shops in my time.
    • gooberguy, on 03/31/2008, -1/+4I've seen a few shops as well, like target and sears.
    • chrismgtis, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1You're an idiot. I am a skydiver and this is not "shopped" you fool.
  • leerayIG88, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1*****, it's like one of those dreams where I fall and I wake up...
  • jturbo, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3True bravery and reckless abandon. In todays world, when one thinks of true bravery the first picture that comes to mind is a battlefield...

    Humans set themselves apart with their willingness to take risks beyond reason. But with great risk comes great reward....they're still trying to come up with the benefits of risking this guys life in this crazy experiment...
    • rusty0101, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3Actually they learned a number of things that should have been transferred into the rocket program, but due to the "Not Invented Here" problem endemic in all too many large government projects, it took Apollo I for NASA to figure out that pure O2 at sea level was not a good way of filling the habitable space in a spacecraft.

      There were other lessons, whether they transferred is debatable. He is a hero though.
  • SantaBacon, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1BALLOON!!!
  • gametavern, on 03/31/2008, -1/+18at what point do you burn up on re-entry? Or did he have to be going faster?
    • Dokument, on 03/31/2008, -1/+4usually she wants you to go a little faster.
    • UcIc, on 03/31/2008, -1/+6The reason an object burns up in the earth's atmosphere is due to aerodynamic heating. Aerodynamic heating is caused by the molecules of a fluid (in this case the atmosphere) moving at high speeds along the surface of an object. This causes friction and in turn causes heat. Since he was pretty well outside of the atmosphere, it's likely that there weren't enough atmospheric molecules to actually cause him to substantially heat up. The video mentions that he "deployed his parachute in the thicker air" which is when he would have likely started to burn if he would have kept going.
      • derek20cali, on 03/31/2008, -3/+1Huh?
      • acdcfanbill, on 03/31/2008, -0/+5You're second part is not quite right, the aerodynamic heat produced when spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere comes from the fact they are traveling at extreme speeds. For instance, the Shuttle is traveling around 8.2 km/s (Mach 25) when it hits 120km of altitude. By the time the shuttle lands it's traveling around 250 km/h, most of this deceleration is done in high atmosphere. The parachutist starts at 0 m/s and never exceeds terminal velocity for the given air density (little deceleration) so he doesn't build much heat.
    • rusty0101, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3While Uclc's response is reasonably accurate, it misses a couple of points. First of all most of the heat experienced in re-entry is the result of using aero braking to decelerate from orbital, or even extra-orbital velocities to landing velocities.

      When the shuttle returns from a mission to the space station, it is changing from an orbit of approximately 340 Kilometers above the surface to the surface. The period of a station orbit is approximately 91 min (this varies by it's actual altitude.) Ad the altitude to the diamater of the earth (~6738 km) and you end up with a orbital radius of ~7100 km. Multiply by 2 pi and you get the orbital circumference. Multiply by 2/3, and you get an orbital velocity of more than 29 thousand kph. That gets dropped to about 360 kph, mostly by converting velocity into heat. Soyuz capsules also loose the 360 for a relative zero ground speed.

      Kittenger was not travelling at orbital velocities. With the exception of the velocities that the balloon may have collected while passing through a jet stream, he was travelling with effectively zero ground speed. (especially in comparison to orbital velocities. As a result the only speed he needed to be concerned with was terminal velocity through the atmosphere he was in, which at 30 miles is a speed about the speed of sound.
  • ineptsavant, on 03/31/2008, -0/+7I saw this video first about a year ago, ever since then I've wanted to do it before I die. I don't remember the numbers exactly, but I calculated the cost of the helium and balloon material and I think it was around 40k(for the same amount that he used). I could build my own gondola. Only problem is I need someone to loan me a space suit and need to do some research about the parachute. For instance you have to have a drag chute or else you start spinning so rapidly in the very thin atmosphere that you would die from the forces(and probably have your arms go flying off). soo.. anyone have a spare spaccesuit laying around?
    • IHaveIssues, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1You may want to consider a good web of earth-based recovery teams. Especially if you hit the water.
  • Elissar, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1Really makes me want to buy a high-altitude weather ballon, a parachute, and a nice warm jacket.
  • quicksilverta, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2I think that's what you call a bad ass.
  • Aidanjalali, on 03/31/2008, -0/+22Just the thought of being able to see the whole of earth like that, and jumping INTO it...GOD I wish I was him. That must have been a truly surreal experience.
  • ajrunner7, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3If you want to learn more about Kittinger and others, read the book The Pre-Astronauts. Great book. These guys were men!

    http://www.amazon.com/Pre-Astronauts-Ballooning-Th ...

    the first review is titled:
    " Joe W. Kittinger, Jr -- Biggest Balls Ever!"
    • WhatInThe42o, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1Thanks for the suggestion; I'll have to check that book out.
  • Kinnkster, on 03/31/2008, -0/+0Wow, thats pretty amazing. Wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't been on Discovery.
  • trackerbishop, on 03/31/2008, -1/+7sky diving at the speed of light: video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz3M5INMTBM
    • jun2san, on 03/31/2008, -0/+5It's a relief to not get Rick Rolled for once.
    • chizzlechest420, on 03/31/2008, -5/+1i dont think you fully understand the whole 'rick rolled' thing...just sayin
  • Remccs, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1was he really the FIRST in space?! wow, i can't believe i never knew, or anyone else didn't know for that matter
    • MrMongoose, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1He was still in the upper atmosphere, I wouldn't exactly call that space. He went up to 31.3 km, but NASA doesn't consider you an astronaut until you hit 80 km. The rest of the world says 100 km. Also, another member of the program climbed to nearly the same height (30.9 km) 3 years earlier, so he wasn't even the first to break 30 km.
  • Vidpro14, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1This wasn't Kittinger's first jump from high altitude. His first almost killed him. His small stabilizing chute malfunctioned and wrapped around his neck causing him to pass out. He was saved when his main chute opened automatically. In the jump documented in the video, he was wearing a full pressure suit which was similar to the suits worn later by the Mercury Astronauts. One of his gloves failed to pressurize, but he jumped anyway. He suffered pain but no permanent injuries to his hand, or the rest of his body, for that matter.
  • name2see, on 03/31/2008, -0/+2Unfortunately he "only" achieved Mach 0.9. Had he jumped from 4000ft higher he would have actually broken/matched the speed of sound for a moment.
  • empirefalling, on 03/31/2008, -2/+1A very amusing and somewhat trivial experiment by the Americans. The Soviet Union had already been experimenting in this area many years before and was busy building spacecraft to reach actual space. In 1960 the West was becoming concerned with losing it's imperial hold over South East Asia and with the technological superiority of the Soviet Union. If not for the Soviets, the West would have never gone into space.
  • gaph2000, on 03/31/2008, -2/+2I know I'm probably gonna sound stupid here, but why didn't he burn up?
    • smallwang, on 04/01/2008, -1/+2He wasnt going fast enough and the air was too thin
  • AaronSTL, on 03/31/2008, -0/+3I can has space jump too?
  • ryuujinusa, on 04/01/2008, -2/+1youtube link http://youtube.com/watch?v=RnOt4aN2uyc
  • bingobongony, on 04/01/2008, -3/+2I sure hope this can be submitted again NEXT month...It seems to be a monthly front pager.
  • AvangionQ, on 04/01/2008, -0/+2Its not the fall, its the sudden stop at the end ... but this really does make me wonder -- why isn't Joseph Kittinger a more famous name for being the first man in space?
  • chkdg8, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1That was truly amazing. First comment on here from rapcrap187 is right on. Joseph William Kittinger II is like a deadly ninja that the world never knew existed. Oh, and let's not forget that Jules Henri Poincaré was the first to propose the Theory of Relativity, not albert Einstein. E=*****.
  • morphboy23, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1orbital drop shock troopers?
  • Myztry, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1Wow. That would be freaky. Obviously a balloon can't actually leave the Planet (or Earth would loose all it's atmospheric gases to space). But despite what you know, until you saw the balloon as a point of reference, you'd feel like you were drifting out to space with nothing to stop you.
  • ocean17, on 04/01/2008, -0/+1One of the best videos in the world - the 2nd best being "Dayvan Cowboy" which puts it to music !!!!!
  • MeddlMoe, on 04/10/2008, -0/+1well he was not the first man in space, he was only 99% in space... well gagarin was still within 0.02% of the atmosphere, too.
    he diddnt burn up because he was not at orbiting speed, nor high enough.

    i wish i could do that one day...
  • hyperbrand, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1Besides some of nonsense above, his experience is one and unique, indeed an achievement, almost poetical and impossible to capture in words what would have been going down to our little planet.
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