Felix Baumgartner…the name in the news…For those of you who don’t know who this guy is, he is the crazy guy that jumped out of a capsule from nearly 24 miles in the air.  He had 5 different records he wanted to break yesterday (Oct. 14, 2012), but he only broke  some of them.  It’s not his fault that he didn’t break all of his record attempts, but he sure did something that no other person on earth has ever done.

Me…I get really dizzy when I stand too close to the edge of a cliff that doesn’t have a railing to keep me from falling off.  I inherited it from my mother I guess, as she used to say her feet would get really cramped when she was riding close to the edge of a road that had a drop off on her side.  She said it was like a bird clinging to a tree branch.  Well, I know exactly how she felt, because my feet do the same thing.

So, here is Felix Baumgartner, standing on a small platform, 24 miles above the earth and he is going to fall forward off of that platform  and dive headlong toward the ground.

The space guys said he would not have any control over his plummeting for several thousand feet because it was like being in a vacuum up there and no matter what he tried to do he would have no wind resistance or anything that would help him recover from tumbling or turning or anything.  That sure is a comforting thought.

He trained to fall forward in such a way that he would just go straight down, head first and not twist or turn or tumble or any of the ugly things that would cause him not to go straight down headfirst.  This was not his first jump from a very high distance.

Why would a man who seems to have a lot of things going for him want to do such a thing?  REDBULL!  I’m certain he has nothing to worry about financially the rest of his life and neither does his wife and family.  He secured every need they may have in the future when he put his head down and let go of the handles of the craft he was riding in.

One of his goals was to be the first man to break the sound barrier and not be sitting in an aircraft…..how do we know if he did it?  Well, I’m not any sort of scientist, but from my research, if the temperature outside is 60 degrees Fahrenheit and you went 720 mph you would break the sound barrier.  And at minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit you would break it at 680 mph.

As I watched the tv and his balloon was taking him ever so much higher, the reporters gave us outside temperatures etc.  At about 70,o0o feet the outside temperature was hovering around minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit and at 120,000 or so feet it was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer up higher than lower…Weird huh?

So, Felix jumped from the capsule and plummeted headfirst through many tens of thousands of feet of distance and at some point in his descent he reached 840 mph.!.!.!.5, 280 ft in one mile X 840 mph = 4,435,200 ft per hour / 60 min in one hour = 73920 ft. per minute / 60 seconds in one minute = 1,232 ft per second….That my friends is faster than a bb can travel out of my Redrider bb gun!  In fact, that is traveling at a speed of 4.1 football fields per second!  Correct me if I’m wrong, but without a helmet and a facemask on, his face would have looked much like No Grimaces face smashed up against the window of the trailer during a muzz hunt.

So, with your head down rocketing toward the ground at 4.1 football fields per second how do you get yourself slowed down in order to pull the ripcord of your parachute and safely come down to earth?  If you are going 4.1 football fields fast and pull the rip cord, you are going to be watching the lower half of your body falling away from your upper half in about 3/10ths of a second.  Well, I saw him go into some sort of twisting and tumbling act.  I guess that would help break up any aerodynamics that you would have created with your hands stretched down along your sides and your toes pointed toward the safety of  the vessel you just jumped out of.  Anyway, that is something he did and then he acted as if he was a flying squirrel and held his arms out and spread his legs and let the space suit he was in spread out like a sheet and he glided along looking rather cool, in my opinion.  Now here is a guy who has just fallen over 120,000 feet at break neck speed and suddenly he wants to have his forward motion come to a near halt, so at about the 8,000 foot above earth, he deployed his parachute and glided and guided himself to the safety of the good old earth on which we all need to keep our feet firmly planted.

The camera showed him come to a full stop and then he knelt down on both knees and kissed the ground.  Without knowing the whole story I’m certain he said a prayer thanking God for safely returning him to earth and then wished he could get out of that stinking space suit he was wearing.  I’m sure it was filled with bodily fluids of every sort.

Here is a link to the final few minutes of his flight…you can put your own spin on it all, you just read mine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2012/oct/14/felix-baumgartner-skydive-space-video

Bears Butt

Oct. 15, 2012