Skydiving from the edge of space

[tdinc]

in 1960, Joe Kittinger was the first man in space. He lifted from earth in a helium balloon and rose about 30 KM above earth in the emptiness of space. Once he reached the edge of space ..he JUMPED (with a video camera)

video

 

[VenomXt]

nice video. to do that bck then you must of had very little stock in life and death lol.

 

[Grandmaster]

Wow. Imagine the sheer adrenaline rush he was experiencing.

What a ****ing crazy man

 

[vern]

I've seen the video from the cam somewhere else, but the narration was pretty interesting.

 

[Son Goku]

As long as one's captured before re-entering it isn't so bad. But if one were to try to make it to the ground, that'd be plain crazy :lol:

There's a reason most meteors don't make it to the surface. The window from which one can land (in terms of degrees) is rather narrow. Come down to shallow, and bounce off the atmosphere back into space. Come down too steep, and burn up on re-entry. Speaking of getting a little hot in one's posterior :angel:

All said however, it doesn't look like he totally left the atmosphere (or perhaps the stratosphere?), but was rather high up in it...

 

[vern]

He was technically in space. He did land ... parachute in. He did not bounce off.

 

[Johnny]

I was watching something on the science channel about this last night. It was really interesting ..

 

[Son Goku]

He was technically in space. He did land ... parachute in. He did not bounce off.

Technically, it depends how high up one counts as "in space". Above the lower atmosphere, there are other layers such as the ionisphere, stratosphere, etc... I'm also bringing that up from "the air was thin" and his not opening the parachute up until it had gotten a bit thicker (probably a good idea I would gather). Indication wasn't that there was no air, so one wasn't wholly in the vacuum of space, just yet...

The bounce off or burn up (besides being a reason most meteors don't make it to Earth) is a consideration with shuttle landings and the like. It was also a consideration with the Apollo 13 disaster, when they were wondering whether the vechicle could make it back to Earth in the condition it was in, or not...

 

[Khayman]

Freaking awesome, falling at the sped of sound. Thats too cool

 

[vern]

There is no technical boundary between atmosphere and space because the atmosphere thins gradually. Today, the Europeans have the Karman line at 62 miles which they technically say separate atmosphere and space while anyone who goes up with the US is called an austronaut if they go above 50 miles. Atmospheric drag becomes noticeable in reentry above 75 miles ... so discussion of drag is moot since both Europeans and US authorities technically can have astronauts high enough but yet not be affected by "bouncing" off. The Earth's atmostphere extends to almost 900km (exosphere), so one could argue that the shuttle isn't "in space" ... but yet we do say it is.

 

[Son Goku]

Umm, no where did I say there was an absolute boundary (though it is clear that once one has cleared all layers of the atmosphere, one is undoubtedly "in space".

However

He was technically in space. He did land ... parachute in. He did not bounce off.

this is not of necessity, technically correct, in countering what I had said here:

All said however, it doesn't look like he totally left the atmosphere (or perhaps the stratosphere?), but was rather high up in it...

Lets put some actual figures on this:

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/earth/atmosphere.html

According to this image, he would at 30 km be where I predicted, aka high up in the troposphere or in the stratosphere. So technically, I was correct in the placement.

Today, the Europeans have the Karman line at 62 miles which they technically say separate atmosphere and space while anyone who goes up with the US is called an austronaut if they go above 50 miles.

Again, though interesting points, it does not negate anything I said on a technical basis. Doing the necessary mathematical conversions we get

30 KM * (1 mile / 1.609344) = 18.641 miles

This is well within both the 62 miles the Europeans look at and the 50 miles the Americans look at. By neither standard would this person be considered an astronaut, and hence my statement hasn't been shown to be wrong, and it can well be argued that he was not technically in space using the numbers you yourself provided...

so discussion of drag is moot since both Europeans and US authorities technically can have astronauts high enough but yet not be affected by "bouncing" off.

The ironic thing is, what you were interested in arguing against, is where I said just this. OK, I did use the word atmosphere in the more general venacular (what is technically called the troposphere), and also where things were placed (with the system of terminology used back when I was in school); and yet this (use of more general terminology there) is the only thing you could really take issue with. Conceptially, the placements are quite well where I put them.

Further, in my initial post, no where did I use the word space and I wasn't the first to introject that word into the discussion, though after entered, I ellaborated on the position.

Though interesting (and perhaps leaning towards semantics); using the same figures, and the same level of semantics, it can be counter argued that he wasn't technically in space as the 18.641 miles falls within the figure used by either the Europeans or Americans as already stated...

 

[Mastershakes]

At 100 miles, we still find traces of the gases we breathe at the surface.
Didn't think our atmosphere stretched up that far... crazy.

 

[Johnny]

He was saying on the show I watched that he was falling at 700 mph and it felt like he was staying still. He had no feeling of falling at all. It wasn't till he opened his shoot, at around 20,000 feet, that he started to feel it.