io9

great, now i have to worry about getting pelted with human parts falling from the sky?

kidding aside, it would be excellent if he could do that.

Video of Kittinger's skydive. Looks like fun (except for the whole 'possible imminent death' thing).

[sonicbomb.com]

"At around 115,000 feet his body will blow through the sound barrier."

Ouch. That's gotta hurt.

would a human body create a sonic 'boom'?
I can't seem to find anything to say one way or another...we assume that it would but I have my doubts...

So I guess he figured out how to solve the deicing problem.

@moff: lol

But how high will he bounce?

It's "Hey man, watch this" to the extreme.

To quote Jefferson Twilight:

"Balls! Brass balls!"

@goldfarb:
Anything going through the sound barrier creates a sonic boom. The only question is how loud it is.

And why is this happening over Saskatchewan you ask? Because he can drift for hundreds of kilometers in any direction and still land in some farmers field in the middle of the flat, flat prairie.

Right... so the heat of friction and ice build up cancel each other out precisely and the entire descent occurs at a comfortable 20 degrees celcius

Brilliant.

@goldfarb: Wow that was an interesting read...

I didn't think it was possible to attain those kind of speeds skydiving...

@goldfarb: With the right diet I've managed to create a few Sonic Booms of my own, much to my girlfriends dismay.

And I've always felt it wasn't really the fall from the space travel disasters like The Challenger that were the problem. It was the massive sudden explosion that was the issue.

When Mr. Fournier passes through the sound barrier, it will not hurt. He will feel a little discomfort prior to that, with the shockwave building pressure on his body, but that soon fades. To put this into perspective, the crack of a rifle being fired is partly the bang of the propellant being burned rapidly, but mostly due to the fact that the bullet will break the speed of sound not long after exiting the muzzle of the rifle. That is why there are such ammo for guns that is labeled "subsonic", which means that a silenced gun will be even quieter because the bullet doesn't break the sound barrier and thereby ruin the advantage of a silencer.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: Actually it was hitting the ground that caused the problem. There is video of the explosion showing the cockpit being ejected in apparently one piece and it has been theorized that the crew were still alive if somewhat dazed at that point.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome:
Actually, the crew portion of the Challenger came through the explosion basically intact. As far as they can tell most, if not all, of the crew were still alive and possibly conscious when it hit the water.

@Ryan H: Correct, at which time the sudden stop, etc. The full report is available online somewhere on one of the NASA websites.

I heard that Fournier was just tryin to get rid of that bothersom cowlick that had plagued him so long

@Ryan H: @sir_eccles: Huh didn't know that, well fair enough.

Did you know that Crista McAuliffe had bad dandruff?

Yeah they found her Head and Shoulders all over the eastern seaboard.

Man... I haven't told a Challenger joke in like 20 years. Thank you grade school.

I find it hard to believe that being able to jump towards earth will ever be safer than trying to return in a vehicle.

Especially considering how his fall is being meticulously planned and repeatedly canceled by weather.

Ridiculous. Just admit that it's a stupid human trick and move on!

Perhaps if the outdated Built-by-a-Committee junk that is the Space Shuttle was replaced by something more modern and better suited to the types of missions likely to be required, folks wouldn't have to worry so much about astronauts having to jump out of the hatch 25 miles above the ground.

I've always daydreamed about de-orbit skydiving. You could coat your re-entry shield with successive thin layers of various metals, making your ion trail rather pretty. :)

The video for "Dayvan Cowboy" by Boards of Canada used footage of Kittinger's jumps to great effect...

+ Watch video

Kittinger's gondola is on display at the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

Very cool stuff. The man's got bigger balls than any of us.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: HAHA!
what does NASA stand for?

Need Another Seven Astronauts

Actually I have a few technical questions about this. When he goes supersonic, isn't this actually because the air is so thin up that high that he doesn't have to worry about terminal velocity?

Isn't he counting on terminal velocity in the lower atmosphere to slow him down before he starts cracking chutes?

Also this story reminds me of the end of Darkstar. Maybe Dolittle made it!

@Paul D: Damn you for posting that video before me! Damn you!

wow, thats nutty... the sound barrier? How can he survive? Lots of faith in the spae suit, I guess...

@The Blow Leprechaun: well I think he's trying to show that the human body can withstand it without a vehicle so if they can make, in this case, the cockpit better suited towards landing the people should be able to withstand the forces inside said cockpit.

Or at least that's the theory.

It's not a problem. All he needs is an exo-suit made of gold-bonded titanium alloy powered by a hand-sized ARC reactor and a couple of repulsor jets.

If Jeff Bridges can do it, ANYONE can.

Dang, and I thought it was nuts when I went skydiving at 13,000 feet, let alone 130,000 feet. Sheesh! Sounds like a rush, though!

I would think that the drop in speed from sonic to terminal velocity would generate a lot of heat. Of course the speed of sound will be different (lower?) up there than it is a sea level.

won't that dude kinda burn up on re-entry?

@kaden: i don't think it works that way. it's like saying if my fishsticks were burnt on the outside but frozen on the inside it balances them out and they are cooked.

if that's true why were my fishskicks thrown out last night?

@Ryan H: @Ryan H:

While the crew was not killed by the explosion, they were unlikely to even be conscious at the time of impact..

The cabin was likely de-pressurized by the explosion (at 65,000 ft...

Buy the time the air got thick enough to breath they would be unlikely to regain consciousness in those few seconds..
[www.msnbc.msn.com]

Remember that before the Challenger, astronauts just wore jumpsuits during lift off...

Man mistakes.. I ment to direct that to RyanH and @sir_eccles:

Not to mention the buy vs by and the missing )...

@DocGratis: That's ok, got the point. I was mostly going by the mention in reports that at least 3 of the emergency oxygen things had been activated. So you never know, a few could have been conscious. Personally I would go for unconscious if I had the choice.

I wonder if he screamed,"Weee!" on the way down we would hear it around the World?

Either way, I would love to sky dive except...I'm scared. o_o

I believe the whole "crew was conscious" thing is an urban myth.

Why hasn't Johnny Knoxville done this first?

@twophrasebark:
Whether the Challenger crew was conscious is known only to NASA, which refuses to release that info & even buried all the recovered Challenger debris in a couple of abandoned missile silos at Cape Canaveral.
However, a Miami Herald Sunday Magazine article from about six months to a year after the explosion stated that all four of the upper deck crew survived the initial explosion & was conscious long enough to turn on their emergency oxygen supplies. I remember that the article stated that two of the main deck crew used up 100% of the emergency supply & the other two used at least 50% of the oxygen.
It's likely that the two who used up the 100% survived until hitting the ocean surface at 250MPH or faster & possibly even survived that, but lost consciousness at the impact.
Because NASA refused to allow any outside forensic analysis of the bodies, the truth will stay hidden for decades, or until some brave NASA heretic leaks it.

@corpore-metal:
Comment on Extreme Skydiver to Plummet 25 Miles to Earth Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. I was going to say, "Wait, what about Terminal Velocity?" But then you mentioned the air being thinner. I never thought of that.

@goldfarb:
My favorite shuttle disaster jokes require some background.

That was the year the Bears won the Superbowl. The Patriots beat the Dolphins in the AFC playoffs, scored on their first drive in the Superbowl, then got trounced.

What do the Challenger and the Patriots have in common? They both look good for the first minute and a half.

What's the difference between the Challenger and the Patriots? The Patriots at least made it past Miami.