Essay on Felix Baumgartner: The Red Bull Space Jump

Taylor Garrant November 25, 2014 Red Bull Space Jump
Introduction
The Red Bull Space Jump was a project meant to set multiple world records, such as the highest jump ever made, longest freefall, and the fastest speed anyone has ever gone during a freefall. The makers of this jump wanted to transcend human limits. They sent a man named Felix Baumgartner into the stratosphere in a balloon and took him to the height of 128,100 feet. After reaching this height, he began to free fall back to earth, thus breaking the stratosphere layer. With this jump, there was a desire to gain scientific knowledge for future pioneers, to improve aerospace engineering, and to improve space suit technology. This project started back in 2005 and was not completed until a little over 8 years later, in 2012.
The jump was made by Felix Baumgartner on October 14, 2012. Prior to this jump, he had skydived since 1988 for
Red Bull. Felix holds multiple records for base jumps. Felix had the drive for something bigger and more exciting, so he decided to do this jump. With this jump, it required a few test jumps. There were 2 test jumps involving a man, and
2 others with no real man. The training Felix needed for this jump was experience and with the two jump tests, he had to be part of them. Felix did these test jumps with his friend, Luke Aikins. Luke guided him with what to do with his pressurized suit while falling.
With this jump, it required a lot of dangers. Some of the dangers included lack of oxygen in the stratosphere, high speeds when breaking the speed of sound, chance of the suit catching on fire because of the high speeds, and uncontrollable movements (ex., spinning and turning upside down). Safeguards against these threats are years of training with topoftheline space suits (pressurized because it is so cold in the stratosphere), organized capsule, flameresistant suit, radio connection with Felix, and monitors. Some of these monitors measured speed, height, and oxygen levels. The ending time for the jump was roughly ten minutes long. When he was at 4 minutes and 19 seconds, he pulled his parachute.
Data to Glean
The speed of sound in Earth’s atmosphere at sea level at 20 is 340.3 or 761.39. The speed of light is 299,792,458 .
Felix was 128,100 m above the earth when he left the balloon. The density of the atmosphere at sea level is 1.225 .
The atmospheric density at which Felix jumped is .004. When breaking the speed of sound, Felix was 104265 feet, or
31780 meters. He was going 761.39 when breaking the speed of sound. When pulling his parachute, he was going
116, or 186 and he was 8567 feet or 2612 meters high.
Speed
Time (s)
(mph)
10
228
20
438
30
639
40
782
50
847

Stuff to figure out

He was 24 miles above earth when he jumped. Large planes generally travel around miles above earth. The radius of the earth equals 6378.1 km, in miles 3963 miles.

From where he jumped, if there was no air resistance, he would have had to fall 13235.496 miles to reach the speed of sound. Where as it only took him 4.3 miles to reach the speed of sound. I believe it does make sense because without the air resistance it takes longer to speed up. If air resistance did not exist it would have taken 22.788 s. to get to where he pulled his shoot. When in reality it took him 4:20 min. It took 63.369 assuming the guy on the ground was directly below him.

Time
Position
Speed (with air
Speed (without air
(s)
(m) resistance)(mph) resistance) (mph)
10
38432
236
152.5
20
36902
446
411.8
30
34468
631
638.7
40
31288
785
848.7
50
27659
838
1038.6

There was a significant difference around 30 s because the speed without air resistance started to increase more than the speed with air resistance.

time (s)

V0 (m/s)

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Essay on Felix Baumgartner: The Red Bull Space Jump

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