
Alan Eustace Jumps from Stratosphere, Breaking Felix Baumgartner’s World Record - specialp
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/25/science/alan-eustace-jumps-from-stratosphere-breaking-felix-baumgartners-world-record.html
======
aresant
So the guy straps himself to balloon, rides straight up for 2 hours, 25 miles
high.

So 12.5 mph, a little faster than the average bicycle pace. Straight up.

Works with other engineers in secret for 3 years to knock out a badass space
survival suit.

And then, just for us kids, "cut himself loose from the balloon with the aid
of a small explosive device . . ." and achieves 800mph+, setting off a "small
sonic boom".

I !@%! love engineers.

~~~
_random_
...at the age of 57.

~~~
base698
A nuclear engineer friend started BASE jumping and skydiving at 57 after
seeing a segment on TV. Never too late to start.

------
joeguilmette
To clear up some points (I am a professional tandem skydiver and use drogues)-

A drogue is about 3 to N get feet wide. It is used for z axis stability, to
slow you down a bit so that when the parachute deploys it will not explode,
and finally to actually deploy the parachute.

If you do not use a drogue chute then you would use a pilot chute to deploy
the parachute. The difference between a pilot and drogue chute is minimal. In
fact, design wise the only difference is that after you deploy the drogue you
need to pull a handle to open the container holding the parachute, at which
point the drogue chute becomes a pilot chute. A deployed pilot chute will open
the container without needing to pull a separate handle. Drogues are also
generally much hardier than pilot chutes as they have more force acting on
them.

A drogue is not a parachute. The para in parachute means it is designed to be
used to slow you down enough to survive your fall. A drogue is not designed to
do so.

Tandem skydiving, the kind everyone does recreationally, uses drogue
parachutes to maintain what would be terminal velocity for one person.
Terminal velocity for two people lying on top of each other (or one 500lb
person) would be too high to safely deploy either the main or reserve
parachute.

So yes, a tandem skydive is still a skydive even though you use a drogue.
Eustace, even though he used a drogue, has the record for highest skydive.
Arguably Baumgartner had the record for longest freefall without a drogue. But
longest freefall without a drogue is a silly record to cling to. Does anyone
care who has the record for driving the fastest land vehicle without a helmet?

This still is amazing. And from the perspective of a professional skydiver,
Eustace broke Baumgartner's record fair and square.

------
coreymgilmore
Amazing how little this was publicized and promoted compared to Baumgartners
jump. Undoubtedly because Redbull used FB's jump for marketing, but still a
feet like this should have had more media exposure.

On a side note: If the marketing/publicity budget on this was so much lower,
and the design was simpler, how much less do you think this cost compared to
FB/Redbull Stratos?

~~~
deepsun
Because Alan didn't break the world record. According to article, he used
drogue-chute, which is basically a small parachute, and it's WAY safer to jump
with drogue. Baumgartner, however, didn't use no drogue-chute, and has really
broken the world record. Funny that during Baumgartner's jump they kept
telling that previous record was held by Joseph Kittinger, while it did not:
FAI doesn't recognize it, because with drogue chute it's way easier and safer.

~~~
specialp
[http://www.fai.org/records/news-of-
records/37017-baumgartner...](http://www.fai.org/records/news-of-
records/37017-baumgartners-records-ratified-by-fai) Here is the list of
records set by Baumgartner. The record set today is the highest exit altitude.
So yes the record is broken. Baumgartner will still have the farthest freefall
and highest speed jump without a drogue. The article did not say all records
broken. The most important record to the public probably is the exit altitude
record.

------
sjs382
My favorite part is that he did it so quietly, with no marketing or build-up.
Just because he wanted to.

Also, off-topic, but this is some terrible ad placement:
[http://imgur.com/T6MBg2x](http://imgur.com/T6MBg2x)

~~~
shostack
Love this...have a whole folder of these sorts of placements at home and this
will make a lovely addition. Thanks for posting!

------
birken
Wow, I had to do a double take when I saw the name. He is a well known SVP at
Google, and at least when I was there he was in charge of the majority of
engineering. Good for him.

~~~
joshu
Yeah, he hired me when I was at Google and have kept in touch.

When I saw the title, I was like, wow, someone has the same name as Alan.

~~~
foobarqux
Do you happen to know if he is French?

~~~
oh_sigh
Savoyard

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djb_hackernews
To put this in perspective, if the average school room globe diameter is 0.3
meters, Alans peak elevation was 0.97 millimeters above the surface of the
globe...

~~~
joeevans1000
And for the non-metric... he went less than a 16th of an inch above a globe
about a foot in diameter. It's amazing how thin our shell of sustainable
atmosphere is.

There was a lot that annoyed me about the RedBull promo jump, a whole lot, but
the most annoying thing is how they misrepresented his view using fisheye
lenses to make it look as though the horizon curved radically for him. They
wanted viewers to think he was in outer space, in that regard.

If you watch the RedBull footage, you can see when this phony effect gets
turned upside down when he was upside down; in that case the earth curved
radically the other way.

~~~
jonah
I doubt the distortion was intentional, I feel like going back to see what
cameras they used but most action cams (GoPro, etc.) have cheap fisheye wide
angle lenses rather than more expensive (and complex) rectilinear ones which
would represent the horizon correctly.

------
AndrewKemendo
As a skydiver I am super upset that I didn't know this was happening!

I'd love to see video of it and see if he had better control than Felix. We
almost lost him and I wonder if Alan had implemented controls to prevent a bad
spin.

On another note, I love that he used the suit only instead of a diving bell -
completely simplifying the whole process. It's arguably more dangerous, but
not by much.

~~~
ogig
>I'd love to see video of it and see if he had better control than Felix. We
almost lost him and I wonder if Alan had implemented controls to prevent a bad
spin.

The article mentions a small early parachute that is used to prevent that
spin. You can also see it on the video.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Generally the pilot/drogue chute only provides z axis stability (makes sure
you don't roll over onto your back) and certainly the drogue wasn't deployed
during the mach transition so I don't think it would have been helping that
during the phase that Felix had trouble.

------
Crito
> _" Mr. Eustace cut himself loose from the balloon with the aid of a small
> explosive device and plummeted toward the earth at a speeds that peaked at
> more than 800 miles per hour, setting off a small sonic boom heard by
> observers on the ground."_

I was under the impression that the _" faster than the speed of sound"_ thing
was technically deceptive, since it used the speed of sound at sea-level but
they were only doing that many miles up where the speed of sound was much
higher. Terminal velocity should always be lower than the speed of sound, is
my thinking here. If that is the case, then I wouldn't expect a sonic boom.

Is it actually the case that they have enough momentum to continue to fall
that fast as they enter the denser atmosphere?

~~~
matthewmcg
The speed of sound actually decreases, and then increases again as you go up
in altitude. So when they say faster than the speed of sound, they mean the
local speed of sound (hence the sonic boom).

This is explored (with graphs!) here for the case of Mr. Baumgartner's jump:

[http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/24/falling-faster-than-
the-s...](http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/24/falling-faster-than-the-speed-of-
sound/)

------
incision
Fantastic.

I've long thought that if I ever acquire the means I'd want to take a U2 ride
like James May [1]. I'm thinking I'd definitely prefer this.

Also, no wonder his name felt so familiar [2].

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJoMDq4AyLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJoMDq4AyLc)

2: [http://pando.com/2014/03/27/how-steve-jobs-forced-google-
to-...](http://pando.com/2014/03/27/how-steve-jobs-forced-google-to-cancel-
its-plan-to-open-a-paris-office/)

~~~
layman
May be he went up to get permission from Steve for some other hire! Just
making a joke. This sure is remarkable and I admire this. Wish I could do it
one day myself.

------
Yhippa
> “It was amazing,” he said. “It was beautiful. You could see the darkness of
> space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen
> before.”

I want to experience this before I die.

~~~
p1mrx
> I want to experience this before I die.

This gets a lot cheaper when you remove the survival constraint.

~~~
presumeaway
He didn't specify the length of the interval between when he experiences it,
and when he dies.

------
gohrt
Why does Alan Eustace not have a Wikipedia page?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace)

Other random Google SVPs do:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amit_Singhal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amit_Singhal)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai)

~~~
aniket_ray
Well a Google SVP is not "random", certainly not Sundar Pichai.

------
onewaystreet
The article says he had a GoPro on. Hopefully they release some video or
stills from the actual jump.

~~~
MoistDinosaur
just wait for the next "And"roid commercial. Android Wear, in space!

------
taternuts
This is one of the most bad-ass things I've read in a while. The fact that it
was so under-covered so as _not_ to be associated with any kind of marketing
makes it even cooler.

------
jeztek
More details here:
[http://www.paragonsdc.com/stratex/](http://www.paragonsdc.com/stratex/)

------
trhway
>plummeted toward the earth at a speeds that peaked at 822 miles per hour,
setting off a small sonic boom heard by observers on the ground.

doesn't FAA prohibit supersonic flights over US territory? :)

~~~
noir_lord
On a technicality he wasn't flying only falling ;).

~~~
trhway
on a military radar he probably looked like a ballistic missile warhead :)

~~~
ghshephard
He looked absolutely nothing like a ballistic missile [1], different radar
profile, totally different source/trajectory - at his peak he was 25 miles
high, whereas an ICBM at midcourse is about 750 miles - and, finally he was
moving _way_ too slow - at his peak he was moving at 800 miles/hour. ICBMs in
their Re-Entry phase move are tracking at around 15,000 miles/hour.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_miss...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile)

------
bicknergseng
I know the ISS is moving at ~27,600 km/h and is ~10 times further away than
this jump, but is there a significant engineering reason to not say... double
this jumps height? 5x? ...10x?

~~~
tjohns
The maximum altitude for a weather balloon is 173,000 feet, though 60,000 to
120,000 feet is more common.

If you want to go higher, you're going to need to use a rocket instead of a
gas-filled balloon.

~~~
fletchowns
What determines the maximum height that a weather balloon can go?

~~~
krasin
The density of the air, the higher altitute, the smaller density:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#mediaviewer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#mediaviewer/File:Atmosphere_model.png)

And the balloon has to have a smaller density than the surrounding air to be
floating.

------
unchocked
We need more hero-engineers like him. Now he's cool, as opposed to just nerdy
(and rich). Bang for the buck, this is going to help STEM a great deal.

Astronaut daredevils: both cool and nerdy.

~~~
ForHackernews
How is he a hero? What was "heroic" about this stunt?

~~~
fixermark
There's some heroism in daring to do something technically possible that
hasn't been done before---the fact that he did it with world-class technical
backing and engineering work doesn't diminish the fact that at the end of the
day, he strapped into that suit and he rode it down.

Apollo 11's crew had all of NASA backing it; that doesn't make them less
heroic.

~~~
lmm
They were heroic because they took those risks, at least in some part, for
science, for the good of humankind. Armstrong wanted to be recognised as a
geologist (cynthiologist?) more than as an astronaut. This sounds like it's
just some rich guy doing it for fun. Which, y'know, best of luck to him, enjoy
what you've earned, but it seems no more heroic than buying a Ferrari.

~~~
djloche
This would be like buying a Ferrari and then re-engineering it to be able to
successfully break the world land speed record.

~~~
gaadd33
Pretty much what this guy did:
[http://www.bobnorwood.com/Norwood%20Accomplishments.htm](http://www.bobnorwood.com/Norwood%20Accomplishments.htm)

------
sp332
I wonder why he decided to use pure oxygen?

~~~
specialp
It could also be that he is breathing gasses at far less than the pressure at
sea level. The suit is probably pressurized to a very high altitude.

------
mercwear
He did it because it was a hard engineering problem that interested him, not
for the publicity. A+

------
stormbrew
> He did not feel or hear the supersonic boom as he passed the speed of sound,
> he said. He performed two slow back flips before a small parachute righted
> him.

Just out of curiosity, isn't this expected? It is my extremely layman
understanding that the boom happens behind the object moving supersonically,
and obviously if you're going faster than the speed of sound it won't catch up
to you, right?

~~~
josu
If the people on Earth heard it, he must have heard it at some point. Even if
he was travelling faster than the sound wave, as he started decelerating the
wave must have caught him up at some point.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd imagine the part of the wavefront behind him would dissipate in his wake,
only undisturbed parts - those moving out to the sides - would survive to pass
him? Others could potentially hear the boom that way without him hearing it.

------
dekhn
Alan also wrote a wonderful Digital Technical Note (he used to work at, or
manage Digital's Western Research Labs):
[http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-
TN-13.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-TN-13.pdf)

it's worth reading the whole thing, including the references.

------
phkahler
I've been wondering when the high power rocketry guys and the skydivers will
get together...

------
vermontdevil
I admit I thought maybe this was one of the numerous hoax news that's been
plaguing Facebook lately.

But really? Wow. That definitely came out of left field considering how long
Felix' jump was promoted until the jump day.

------
jchook
At what point does the boundary between a high-altitude skydiving suit and re-
entry spacecraft become blurred? With the right definitions someone could say
that Yuri Gagarin has this record beat.

~~~
ars
With reentry you are in orbit first (i.e. velocity tangent to the ground).

With a free fall you are at standstill relative to the ground before you
start.

~~~
pmontra
Maybe I'm being pedantic but it's possible to perform a reentry without being
in orbit first. Most notable cases, the Apollo missions. They plunged directly
into the atmosphere without entering orbit.

Details and rationale at
[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=607491](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=607491)

~~~
ghshephard
The Apollo was either on the moon or orbiting the moon, so in either case it
was orbiting the earth.

~~~
pmontra
A very peculiar orbit but OK. So my next candidate is the Startdust mission.
That went into a solar orbit and released a capsule to return samples to Earth
on a fly by in 2006 before being sent to visit a comet in 2011. That capsule
is quoted to have been the fastest reentry for a man made object at 12.9 km/s,
which is faster than Earth escape velocity at sea level.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_%28spacecraft%29#Launc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_%28spacecraft%29#Launch_and_trajectory)

------
jangid
Alan himself had distanced himself from Google's offer for support; because of
marketing etc. I am sure he his happy to not get much media coverage.

------
eyeareque
I love it when things like this happen. He spends next to nothing compared to
redbull, and surpasses their record. Awesome work :)

------
pingou
I was surprised to see he was breathing through a mask and seriously wondered
what would have happened if he had vomited in it.

------
awongh
I hope that some of this work gets open sourced. Is this the next logical step
from balloon cameras?

------
taksintik
Up next.. Power assisted Launch from the moon with reentry landing on MGM Las
Vegas. For tha win.

------
chris_wot
Is there footage of the whole descent from his POV?

------
ck2
at 57 years old - dang - what is my excuse...

~~~
thenmar
Mine is that I can't afford to hire a team of engineers for three years...

~~~
taternuts
Ultimately it still comes down to the question of whether or not you've got
the chutzpah to free-fall for that long. I'm not sure I would.

~~~
manish_gill
I know right? I would've said "yeah maybe I'll do it given the chance", but a
few weeks ago, I got the chance to jump from a cliff in a river -- very safe,
and everyone was doing it, but I still froze for a second. Then someone behind
me went "just look ahead, don't look down!=" which is what I did! :)

------
mikepalmer
... and at the press conference after his record-breaking jump, Mr. Eustace
addressed assembled reporters in Mandarin!

------
blackkettle
what happened to the balloon?

------
general010
This is gonna put a little dampening on all the Red Bull hoopla.

~~~
joeevans1000
Hooray. That whole thing was absurd. They hyped it like it was the first moon
landing.

------
birdstrike8888
grep on "bird' at 212 comments "bird strike' problem for aircraft, likely
worse than deer strike problem for automobiles. question: what is the strategy
to survive BIRD STRIKE problem? please.

Also, birds could be 'long flight' dozing while flying in formation and are
NOT looking up.

Congrats. and am I off on my questioning, since this is question 122 or is the
fluoride and pollutants in drinking water decreasing general intelligence in
USA like the lead did in the Roman Empire?

~~~
cpncrunch
Your comment doesn't entirely make sense. However bird strikes are generally
only a problem under 1000ft, and the parachute will have opened at that point.
(You can get bird strikes at higher altitudes, but it is quite rare as the
majority of bird activity is close to the ground).

I know this as I'm a pilot and I've had quite a few very close encounters with
birds when taking off or landing. The plane I fly only manages 100mph, so
generally the birds have time to get out of the way.

------
andrethegiant
Google exec films with a GoPro, not Glass? Missed out on a marketing
opportunity.

~~~
astolarz
> Mr. Eustace said Google had been willing to help with the project but he
> declined company support, worried that his jump would become a marketing
> event.

------
ForHackernews
I'm sorry, but I didn't care about the Red bull/GoPro marketing stunt, and I
don't care about this one, either.

"Oh, but this one fell from slightly higher up than the other one!"

Can somebody explain why this is impressive or cool? Anyone can fall.

~~~
DanBC
The falling part is easy. The not dying part is harder. The creating a suit to
fall in is tricky too.

And as for falling being easy: when's the last time you jumped off a high dive
board? Try it sometime.

~~~
base698
Dunning Kruger effect.

Stick your hand out a car window and not the force at say 70 mph. Now imagine
it twice as fast. If your hand is not symmetrical you spin. I can do turns in
the air with just my hands. A misplaced arm or leg is going to cause even more
force and faster rate of turn.

