Current event: Red Bull Stratos - freefall from the edge of space

[nixxon]

Check it out LIVE:



19,000 feet and climbing...

Wonder what will happen with Baumgartner as he breaks the sound barrier, free falling, in a couple of hours from now.

nixxon

Red Bull Stratos is a mission to the edge of space that will try to surpass human limits that have existed for more than 50 years. Supported by a team of experts, Felix Baumgartner (Austrian, not Australian )will undertake a stratospheric balloon flight to more than 120,000 feet / 36,576 meters and make a record-breaking freefall jump in the attempt to become the first man to break the speed of sound in freefall (an estimated 690 miles / 1,110 kilometers per hour), while delivering valuable data for medical and scientific advancement.

[kolbep]

This is interesting.
Busy watching now

[nixxon]

65 years ago, today, Chuck Yeager in Bell X-1 was the first man ever to break the sound barrier.

[Hypernova]

Garrr, it's 1AM in Taiwan and we are only half way into the 3 hour ascent, maybe I should sleep for an hour first.

[nixxon]

85 000 feet and climbing...

(35 000 feet to go)

nixxon

[tom66]

What will the Flat-Earth society make of the curved earth videos? Those are faked too?

[SeanB]

Broken record for highest ballon...... Now at over 35km up....

[tom66]

127,000 ft now.

[SeanB]

39km now, and you can hear the inverters in the cabin whining with a warble depending on loading.

Getting ready for one short step but one hellova long way to the next one.......

[DarkPrince]

Minus some communication issues (what'd you expect in that environment) it went rather smoothly! Very nice landing n' all! Awesome. Congrats to him!

[SeanB]

Done and dusted, 2 records broken, and one set.

All it needed was one less talking head commenter talking utter shyte over the top of it all. Space is supposed to be silent aside from when a radio breaks squelch and the conducted noise from the ship.

[Fraser]

I was glued to the monitor....my wife even brought my dinner to me so as not to miss it !

That guy has some major courage to step out into the edge of space and trust that the techies got their act together when sorting out his suite.

Well impressed with the whole event. The live feed with all the measurements showing was great. The photography at altitude... amazing !

Loved it, and much better than 'Strictly Come Dancing' that my wife was watching on the BBC !

Fraser

[poptones]

Well that was sort of interesting but nothing really spectacular. I don't know what I was expecting, I guess Apollo.

[Neilm]

Broken record for highest ballon...... Now at over 35km up....

It won't count. To get the record you have to land the balloon again.

Neil

[poptones]

So... did he break the speed of sound?

[SeanB]

Neilm, at least the capsule and the Mylar will land **somewhere** while the helium goes out to greet the universe.

[Neilm]

True, but as I understand the rules the pilot has to stay in the balloon to count as landing it, rather than letting it crash.

Neil

[vk6zgo]

What will the Flat-Earth society make of the curved earth videos? Those are faked too?

Some of the cameras had Fish-eye lenses,& were showing curvature when he was only about 2000ft up!
They'll just point at those,& say they were all Fish-eyes.