In just over 1 Day and 10 hours…..Felix Baumgartner will attempt to become the first human parachutist to break the sound barrier. He will do this by climbing to an altitude of just over 120,00 feet (36,600 meters) in a contained capsule suspended from a balloon and then jumping in a freefall towards earth before finally parachuting safely down to the ground.
From A Wired.com article….
CAN YOU FALL FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF SOUND?
In short, yes.
As Felix falls from a very high altitude, there are essentially two forces acting on him. There is the gravitational force pulling down and an air resistance pushing up. During the entire jump (even up to 120,000 feet) the gravitational force will be pretty constant. The air resistance force is not constant. It depends on his speed as he moves through the air. The faster he goes, the greater the air resistance force.
For a normal sky diver jumping out of a plane, the jumper will fall and increase speed. However, before too long the speed will increase to a value such that the air resistance force has the same magnitude as the gravitational force. At this point, the net force on the jumper will be zero and he or she will fall at a constant speed. This speed is call the terminal velocity and has a typical value around 120 mph (around 50 m/s).
There is one important difference between Felix’s jump and a normal sky diver – the density of air. At 120,000 feet, the density of air is much lower than it is near the surface of the Earth. This means that the air resistance force will be much smaller at this high altitude (for the same speed) than it would be when he is lower. The result is that he will keep increasing in speed to a value much higher than 120 mph.
Yes, he should go faster than the speed of sound.
This Mission is not without parallel. The current records for the highest, fastest and longest skydive are held by Joseph Kittinger. Kittinger is a retired US Air Force pilot. Project Excelsior (the series of jumps that set those records) was between 1959 and 1960. Since then….no one has come close to breaking his records…..until now.
MORE INFORMATION….
You can watch the jump live by going to www.youtube.com/redbull
more information at www.redbullstratos.com
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