The first step's gonna be a doozy!

[jks9199]

Felix Baumgartner is planning to go a significant step beyond jumping out of a perfectly good airplane... He's planning to jump from 120,000 feet. That's 22 3/4 miles... (And for you metric folks, that's more than 36 and a half kilometers.)

He'll break the sound barrier at that altitude (690 mph) within the first 30 seconds of free fall...

Wanna bet he double and triple checks that his parachute is packed right?

For more, see HERE.

 

[Carol]

Oh my!!!

Um...better him than me...

 

[Big Don]

Won't the size of his, well, big brass ones, slow him down quite a bit?

 

[Ken Morgan]

Seriously, that sounds like one hell of a ride, I'm in!! Where do i sign up???

 

[tellner]

If the 'chute doesn't deploy he's going to make a hell of a splash.

 

[Big Don]

If the 'chute doesn't deploy he's going to make a hell of a splash.

I'm sure there is some kind of a formula for determining the size crater he'd make on impact.

 

[Bruno@MT]

I'm sure there is some kind of a formula for determining the size crater he'd make on impact.

Actually, it probably won't be that bad.
Think of a waterballoon hitting concrete at 200 miles per hour...

 

[Sukerkin]

I thought the free-fall speed-limit was about 186mph? I'll have to check that.

If it is and assuming that less air-resistance means he accelerates to a much faster speed before he gets into denser air, how are they going to handle the heat and other stresses of deceleration?

EDIT: Found an interesting source for this:

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/JianHuang.shtml

 

[Drac]

Better him than me..I saw a picture of Helio Gracie who was somewhere in his late 80's when he did a tandem jump..Takes guts...