On WITWHH there have been some guesses about Skyfall, the movie, which comes out tomorrow.

Serendipitously, the Red Bull stunt was moved from today 'til tomorrow, October 9th.

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1818oo1wv2gzjjpg/original.jpg

Found on Jalopnik.

"His life is basically about records. If he successfully completes Tuesday's jump, he'll be in the record books once again. If he fails, he'll enter some very different books."

There will be live streaming of the event on Jalopnik starting at 4:45 am Whitney Zone time.

Huh? Not sure what Skyfall has to do with witwhh 145, (other than the Chicken Little reference, which is completely out of the loop), but Skyfall appears to be coming out NEXT month.

Oops! Release in the UK is in October and in the US the 9th of November, so I conflated them.

WITWHH 145 sounded like the movie release, but not so.

Will still be up early to watch the first challenge to Kittinger's record in many decades.

Check out www.explorersweb.com for great photos of Felix Baumgartner...his capsule ...his accomplishments...how he is preparing for his jump from the edge of space to be the first person to physically break the speed of sound.

WWW.EPICTV.COM should have good coverage too.

While at Explorers web you may want to read about the avalanche on Manaslu two weeks ago...on September 23...really sad.

And another disastrous avalanche: Annapurna

An avalanche is near enough to a skyfall.

Wagga

Sorry for hijacking your thread...I have been really sick with the flu...and have not had much energy...when I wake up I sometimes look at my Kindle to see what is going on...did not have energy to start new thread so I added to yours...just hijacked your thread again with flu stuff..GET THE SHOT..NOT THE FLU..EVERY BONE IN BODY ACHES..FEVER..COUGH..HEADACHE..ETC..NOT FUN...


SO HOW DID THE SKYFALL GUY DO?

He postponed so you wouldn't miss it. Mission aborted, apparently at T-minus 4 minutes. Says due to gusty winds, but apparently just got word that Wagga was unconscious and could not monitor.

Well, he did it! Records are waiting for confirmation.

Another balloon in Roswell that people will remember many years later -- for a decent reason this time around.

That was awesome to watch. He took a big risk that will pay off for our future astronauts and who knows what else will come out of this freefall/skyfall. NASA and mankind will benefit, hopefully we will never see another manned space ship burn up while re-entering the earth's atmosphere. If tiles are missing on a space ship hopefully our astronauts can eject and freefall/skyfall like Felix Baumgartner did. He's awesome...big Congrats are sent his way from me...I commented on the BBC webpage. There sure are some jerks on that webpage that said mean things...shame on them.

RedBull manned space program delivers while space shuttle crawls around on the ground in LA...

by the way, he wasn't in space quite yet. Entry from true orbit in a similar parachute dive manner would not be the same engineering challenge. Speeds would be much higher (9.81m/s2 acceleration without any friction until you get there, or more like 8.6 m/s2 as pointed out very clearly here) and heat buildup would be so rapid, even a heat shield made of a few cases of RedBull would not protect the astronaut.

400km up in the space station, if you jumped out the window and fell straight down (impossible, as you are orbiting at 27,600km/h, but let's assume shuttle failure and complete dead stop) to about 100km where the first gas molecules will begin to slow you down, you'd probably reach something like 6000mph before the first resistance and heat buildup begins.

Even if you come down at an angle (e.g. you don't drop straight down like an asteroid, but at an angle like the shuttle on re-entry, it gets really hot - that angle they entry at is about the only one that works - faster and the vehicle or parachutist bounces back into space like a skipping stone on water, try it slower and you're getting back to the 6000mph scenario and your descent speed is too high. Without propulsion to decelerate you before the atmosphere, there's just no way to parachute from outside of it and live.

This balloon jump stuff "research" will only help if the Virgin Galactic capsule or whatever space vehicle should fail at a medium to high elevation, because a bailout at mach 5 while still in low orbit and dense air isn't too nice to your freshly pressed space suit either That balloon wasn't moving forward, unlike any space ship that wants to reach orbit.