Skydivers Check In

[TwoJ's]

Yeah I wasn't thinking about the whole lack of air.

[5spoke]

Have you heard about those army/navy jumpers that are deployed behind enemy lines? And so to get them in there, they'll just from some insane altitude so the plane isn't spotted - I don't know the number but something like 30,000 feet. Then they fall as far as they can, opening their shoot at the last second. Just slowing down before they hit the ground. Crazy. I'll have to look that up.

Oh, and then there was that NASA guy in the 70's (?) that jumped from something like 100,000 feet on a weather balloon. I think he exceed the speed of sound on the way down.

wow that video was awesome. Thanks for sharing dude.

[george graves]

Yeah I wasn't thinking about the whole lack of air.

I didn't understand what you were saying :weak:.

Yea, at 100k ft. you're not "technically" at the end of space (I think the official number is closer to 200k) but the air is gone. It's what? Some exponential equation of the density to elevation? Hmm. PV=nRT But you'd need to integrate over altitude. Something like that. Anyways - 100k the sky is jet black during the day. That's how high up you are.

There are some really good high altitude balloon projects you can do with for about $1000. Usually is made up of an picnic cooler, a digital camera with a timed shutter to take pic, and a ham radio, with an microcontroler that reads GPS data, and sends it back over some ham radio model protocol of bells and whistles.. People have been sending them up to 100k feet and the pictures are amazing. I'm not sure if it's the camera, or what, but I swear you can see the curvature of the earth!

I'd love to do one some day - the hard part is getting the payload back. Once the baloon expands too much, it pops, and the payload come screaming back to earth. That when you pay attention to the data being transmitted back to the ground so you can get a location on it before it hits and the antennas won't be sending a clear signal anymore. With the last know location of it falling, you then go on a treasure hunt to find it.

[Farbin Kaiber]

Did you see the MIT kids that did it for hella cheap? ~$150.00

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/

[george graves]

^they used a cell phone as a gps tracker and got lucky - Yea, they say $150. I don't think you or I could do it for that much. I don't think that's a *real* number. They weren't the first and were just looking for a new angle.

[s0urce]

Did some sweet sunset tracking jumps over the weekend. Thought I would share. Tracking jumps are when you fly with your arms swept back and your legs straight to generate really fast forward movement. Basically, a wingsuit style jump without a wingsuit. Someone flies base on their back, and everyone's job is to stay with them and match their speed/fall-rate. I'm the dude in the yellow/blue being a camera whore.



At the very beginning and end you can see my buddy cause a linetwist from a hard toggle turn. He was only at 1000ft. Pretty sketchy!

[Farbin Kaiber]

[Ryan Stewart]

I loved it, havent done it in years. My certification has expired so I would have to start all over again with classes though. Is just such a PITA hobby because its a lot of work to get in the air.