
Felix Baumgartner: The best photos and videos from the edge of space - ulrichkautz
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/137867-the-best-photos-and-videos-of-felix-baumgartners-record-breaking-skydive?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-best-photos-and-videos-of-felix-baumgartners-record-breaking-skydive
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wtvanhest
Does anyone know the specification of what makes the difference between a
person free falling and a person in a vehicle free falling?

I know this seems specific, but lets say for example the space suit is
completely ridged, and made out of metal, would he still qualify?

I'm basically trying to figure out exactly what the point of gear is that
moves it from skydive to vehicular fall.

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devy
I would consider that difference is primarily power assistance. A vehicle
would probably provide power assistance in propelling the motion whereas a
free fall is 100% propelled by the gravity.

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wtvanhest
Using that criteria, every reentry vehicle including the Space Shuttle would
be a "sky dive". I searched on the web and couldn't come up with a good
definition, but I'm sure one exists.

This guy is using a pressurized suit, so it just doesn't seem like that much
of a stretch to single person capsule.

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stouset
However, the shuttle enters the descent carrying over the momentum from its
rockets during the launch. The balloon was roughly at rest, rather than in
orbit.

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wtvanhest
What if he used a balloon with a capsule attached and just released the
capsule? By that definition that would be a sky dive, but it still doesn't
seem like a sky dive.

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Mc_Big_G
_Not a complete success: One high-altitude balloon record is ...This
discrepancy is likely caused by the fact that Baumgartner achieved
significantly higher speeds than Kittinger, and so the free fall phase ended
quicker than expected._

This discrepancy is likely caused by Felix showing great respect for Joe by
allowing him to keep one record.

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Simucal
I'm not saying that Felix didn't intentionally deploy his chute early to
preserve that last record but here are a few points to consider:

Right before Felix deployed his chute he complained that he had poor
visibility because his visor had fogged up. He had been having trouble with
the heating element on his visor before the he made the jump as well. So it is
possible he made the decision to deploy for safety reasons if he wasn't able
to accurately gauge his altitude due to poor visibility.

Lastly, in the Project Excelsior jump Kittinger used a drogue to slow and
stabilize his descent. This is at odds with what Felix was trying to
accomplish which was to break the sound barrier and achieve the fastest free
fall record. So, the difference in speeds between Kittinger and Felix may have
been enough to prevent Felix from also beating the longest free fall record.

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benlm
In the press conference Felix stated that he pulled at 5200 feet, which was
the planned deployment altitude (well, 5000 was planned, but the 200 feet
difference is negligible at 170+mph).

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Simucal
So that solves it then. That would mean that he did _not_ pull early to
preserve Kittinger's record as many people were suggesting. He simply was
going too fast and Kittinger had gone too slow (especially because of the
drogue).

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dhimes
Total _distance_ in free-fall is a better record, then, than total time.

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eric_bullington
Can anyone help me transcribe the altitude, time, and velocity data from the
bbc coverage of this jump? I'm planning on creating an animated JavaScript
infographic using d3. I'm starting at the top of his jump and planning on
trying to sample at 5 sec intervals by pausing the video and writing down the
data. If anyone wants to start at the bottom of the freefall and work up, that
would be great. My main goal is to get the freefall data -- after the chute
deploys is not as important.

I'll post it here as csv once its transcribed.

EDIT: This is taking forever; I'm going to use Mechanical Turk. I'll post here
when done.

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eric_bullington
This is what was produced by mechanical Turk, so I can't completely vouch for
its accuracy. However, I think it's probably pretty correct. Unfortunately,
there are not a lot of data points available from the video transmission
during the ~4:00 jump.

<https://gist.github.com/3896312>

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eric_bullington
In the unlikely event that anyone checks back, I'm holding off on making the
visualization until the Felix Baumgartner team (hopefully) releases the
official data, which would ideally include his vitals during the jump. There
just aren't enough data points here to make an interesting visualization. I
could extrapolate everything, but that's not the kind of visualization I have
in mind. So I'll cross my fingers and hope the team releases the data in the
coming days.

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rplnt
Although he haven't broke longest free-fall by time, he broke the record of
longest free-fall by distance. Baumgartner opened parachute after 36 529
meters[1] of free fall, breaking the record of Yevgeni Andreyev from 1962 by
something over eleven kilometers (24 500m)[2].

I yet have to see an article reporting on this. I only stumbled upon this
information when browsing related wikipedia articles yesterday while watching
the quite boring ascent.

1\. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9607604/Skydiver-
Fe...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9607604/Skydiver-Felix-
Baumgartner-attempts-to-break-sound-barrier-live.html)

2\. <http://www.fai.org/record-parachuting> category Freefall distance

NOTE: While searching for some reliable source I've found that he only broke
his own record today, and that the Soviet record was broken in July. That's
why no article mentions it... I'll leave this comment here as it is still
interesting.

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Luc
They didn't try very hard to show a realistic earth curvature. _sigh_ Now
every non-geek thinks he actually jumped from as high as, say, the ISS,
instead of 10% of that.

I've already seen the non-specialized press pointing out how clearly the earth
curvature is visible in the pictures - but it's highly exaggerated by a fish-
eye lens!

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shardling
I wonder how easy it would be to just apply a transform that reverses the
fish-eye effect. If the source video were high quality enough it might be
pretty interesting.

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Luc
It's a standard feature on e.g. Adobe After Effects. I hope someone will do
it!

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jaipilot747
I can't imagine how hard it would be to force myself to take that one step
between life and death. Bravo!

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digitalengineer
Would it matter if it's 30 kilometer or 3? If anything goes wrong you're dead.
I found it surprisingly easy to jump out of a plane at 3000 meters (3 km)
after just a 5 minute training on the ground. The feeling of falling is super!
The chute deploying? Not so much! (If you're ever planning this do not wear
jeans).

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primodemus
"The chute deploying? Not so much! (If you're ever planning this do not wear
jeans)." Why not?

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artmageddon
I've done a few skydives so I can speak from experience - the rig that your
canopy / emergency reserve is attached to resembles a giant backpack with a
chest strap, and two straps that go around your thighs, and when you deploy
the main canopy, you will feel the rig exerting a braking force on your chest,
shoulders, and thighs. It's a lot like slamming on the brakes in your car at
60mph+. If your jeans are too tight-fitting you may get a rash, or it may just
be really uncomfortable.

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digitalengineer
You're right. When the parachute deployed the jerk was unlike anything I ever
experienced. The straps around my thighs rammed the loose-fit jeans against my
thighs and the thicker stiched part of the jeans made for a few blue
"souveneers" on my skin.

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benlm
I can tell you that's not the usual experience. I don't have a whole lot of
experience, but I do have nearly 300 jumps and I'm still yet to experience a
hard opening. Much more like coming to a slow, graceful stop in the car.
People sometimes have a "slammer" but they're rare and can usually be
attributed to some reason (bad packing, bad body position at deploy time etc).

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artmageddon
At 13 jumps I have even less experience :)

The parent may have been doing a tandem jump; in my experience, the openings
on those first few were much harder than most solo jumps I've done.

Edit: from reading the parent's other posts, perhaps not. Maybe it was a hard
opening on a day he/she happened to be wearing denim. Who knows :)

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benlm
Yep, and if not tandem could have been rental gear. Although I've never had a
hard opening on any gear, the rental gear I jumped as a student was a lot less
comfortable than my rig that's sized perfectly for me.

Congrats on the 13 jumps! Where do you jump at?

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artmageddon
Sorry, I just saw your post! HN really needs a notification system a la Reddit
:)

I jump out of Crosskeys in Williamstown, NJ, USA. The airport code is 17N. How
about yourself?

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easymovet
One small step for mankind, one giant leap for Felix.

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tlrobinson
And energy drink marketing!

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clauretano
I was slightly disappointed that "drink a refreshing can of Red Bull" wasn't
on the pre-jump checklist.

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sadga
Are these photos artificially curved / lens-angled (perhaps intentionally
deceptive?), making the Earth appear more curved and the altitude appear
higher than it would to a human observer at the camera's position?

<http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/felix-> baumgartner-
jumps-from-red-bull-stratos-balloon-640x353.jpg

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Pwnguinz
Does anyone know what (will/has) happen(ed) to the pod? Presumably at some
altitude, the helium balloon will expand to the point of "popping", and down
comes the pod--or am I mistaken?

Assuming the pod falls down, and isn't controlled, isn't that "just a tad"
dangerous?

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InclinedPlane
There is a mechanism for tearing the helium envelope which causes the capsule
to fall, at some point parachutes are released and the capsule makes a soft
landing and is recovered.

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nicholassmith
I'm looking forward to the hi-res images when Red Bull has finally processed
them and gotten them up. The video is spectacular to watch again as well.

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alexnorton
Came here to say the same thing.

This is the kit they had in the capsule:

* Nine high-definition cameras

* Three 4K (4,000 x 2,000-pixel) digital cinematography cameras

* Three high-resolution digital still cameras

* Three small high-definition video cameras: one on each thigh and one on Felix's chest pack

( From [http://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/cameras-
communicati...](http://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/cameras-
communications/) )

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latterd
"A BBC/National Geographic documentary is being made about the project. This
will probably air first in the UK and in the US in November, .." - so I guess
they will have a lot more cool pics. (BBC Website)

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reactor
Does anyone know what will happen to that balloon hanging in there at
Stratosphere?

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quux
Without the weight of the capsule it will rise up and burst, at the press
conference there was a mention of recovering the balloon after it lands.

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BenBoone
All that for being mentioned in the same breath as Neil Armstrong..

