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Skydiver shatters world record with 24-mile leap
- Roritharr 14y agoHe failed breaking the record for longest free fall duration. If he will get a second chance to do that?
- milesokeefe 14y agoIt sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult for him to break on a second try, given he was only 4-7 seconds away from breaking it.
- mittermayr 14y agoi doubt he's gonna do it anytime soon. it took them ages to prepare for this and in local interviews (saw them in Austria) he mentioned a couple of times that he finally wants this to be over and move on to something else. but technically, there's definitely more room to go crazy.
- Jarihd 14y agoCurrent Free Fall Record - 4:36 - and still holding Felix's Free Fall time - 4:22 Short by 14 seconds. Guess he pulled the parachute, when his helmet wiser started fogging up. Would have been great to have him break the existing record after having jumped off from a higher altitude than the earlier record jump. Good luck next time - to whoever makes the next jump.
- erre 14y agoI have huge respect for people who make this sort of call - deploy the parachute when it needs to be deployed, not when it would land him another record. Like mountaineers who turn back before reaching the summit, because they know that getting there is only part of the effort. Well done, Felix. On all accounts!
- Dylan16807 14y agoHow exactly does helmet fog tie into safe parachute decisions? Couldn't see altitude and didn't trust himself to count?
- lloyddobbler 14y agoAs skydivers, we don't count. That's just the stuff from movies. We have altimeters that we trust to tell us our height. But more than those, we trust our best altimeter - our eyes. Visor fogging prevents you from knowing how high you are - either by looking at your altimeter, or looking at the ground. And that's a very dangerous place to be - particularly on an unprecedented freefall like this one. My guess is that Felix spent a while trying to get a glimpse at his altimeter. He finally saw enough to tell him he was getting somewhere close to deployment altitude, and decided to make the safe choice.
- Dylan16807 14y agoOkay, if he thought he was close to the deployment altitude then of course it's perfectly sensible to use the parachute. It's only if he was nowhere near it that I would question using the chute right away in response to vision impairment. And I haven't watched any movies with skydiving, I just figured that if you were watching an altimeter drop you would be able to extrapolate for a limited time.
- lloyddobbler 14y agoIt's definitely an interesting question to consider. Our rule of thumb in skydiving is, "When in doubt, whip it out." You'd rather deploy too high than too low. There's a big hunk of granite coming up pretty fast that you don't want to interface with. :) In Felix's case, deploying too high could be a huge problem as well. So I'd be very interested to hear why/how he chose to deploy where he did. And yeah, under normal circumstances you could possibly extrapolate your altitude...but the problem is that once you can no longer see, you can't go back and get a good idea of where you were at prior to it happening. Visor fogging creeps up fast (even from 12,500'), and once it does, it's very difficult to even find a baseline from which to extrapolate.
- 46Bit 14y agoThey've mentioned that even something like acquiring a replacement balloon would take weeks, let alone the men and materials involved in such an effort. I doubt the funding or will is there to go for it, at least without another level up of altitude.
- spullara 14y agoAt the peak they released helium to slow his ascent. At around 126k ft he accelerated and was ascending at 2000ft/min (twice as fast as he was going for most of the trip). It would have been interesting to see where it would have naturally stopped.
- 46Bit 14y agoThis did seem quite surprising to me as well - I think they might have let it go if it wasn't quite such a high rate of ascent. 2000ft/min could easily give them a final altitude way above what they'd expected.
- tisme 14y agoConsider the risk of having the balloon go pop while he was still in the capsule. Mission shot to hell with no chance of recovery all for going beyond the design parameters of the balloon. They did well by playing it safe and not letting the ascent get out of control or too much above the target. Better to have 3 records set than an uncontrolled ascent with a small possibility of higher records (but not more of them) and a significant chance of disaster.
- benlm 14y agoHe took the record for fastest freefall (supersonic), highest skydive and highest manned balloon flight. Pretty sure he'll be happy with that, and to let Kittinger keep longest freefall.
- tzs 14y agoI'm not sure about the fastest free fall part--how is free fall defined for purposes of this record? In particular, how does the record not belong to Bill Weaver, the test pilot whose SR-71 disintegrated at Mach 3.18? Here's his account of the incident: http://www.barthworks.com/aviation/sr71breakup.htm http://www.barthworks.com/aviation/sr71breakup.htm
- calibwam 14y agoHe didn't survive, which is a requisite to get a record.
- carbocation 14y agoThen how did he write a firsthand account?
- georgemcbay 14y agoghostblogging. It is the hottest new trend in the Valley.
- carbocation 14y agoI must say, I do subscribe to Tupac's ghost-podcast.
- lloyddobbler 14y agoNow that's a freakin' cool article! Freefall is generally defined in terms of vertical speed. If you exit a DeHavilland Twin Otter that's doing 90 knots forward speed, yes, you get "forward throw" from the plane...but you still have to accelerate vertically before reaching terminal velocity. As a skydiver flying on your belly in an arched position, you usually fall at ~5 seconds per 1000 feet...excepting the first 1000 feet, which takes ~10 seconds to fall as you move from 0 vertical speed to 120mph. (It's that age-old physics problem of whether the forward speed of a projectile has an effect on its downward velocity.)
- spullara 14y agoThe fastest freefall and the longest freefall are at odds with one another. Additionally, the record holder used a drogue parachute to slow his descent.
- scoot 14y agoDoesn't that contradict the definition of free-fall? How big can the drogue be before it's considered a parachute?
- spullara 14y agoDon't know if there are standards for this, but here is what Wikipedia says about the previous jump: "On August 16, 1960, he made the final jump, from the Excelsior I999II, at 102,800 feet (31,300 m).[2] Towing a small drogue parachute for initial stabilization, he fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds, reaching a maximum speed of 614 miles per hour (988 km/h)[4][5] before opening his parachute at 18,000 feet (5,500 m)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger
- lloyddobbler 14y agoIMO (skydiving instructor, world record holder with ~800 jumps), it doesn't necessarily contradict the definition of freefall...and was in keeping with Kittinger's mission (which was to test whether a Mercury astronaut with no skydiving experience could exit their spacecraft safely in the event of an emergency during the ascent). The jump on which the 1960 record was set was Joe Kittinger's 34th jump. Regardless, tandem skydiving rigs traditionally use drogues to stabilize and slow the freefall. So while they do provide drag, and semantically one could say that it's not "terminal velocity", ask anyone who's made a tandem jump: 120mph is freefall. I'd say if a drogue is landable, you could call it a parachute. Most drogues are ~2 feet in diameter and only slow you down by, say, 20mph...not exactly landable. Definitely an interesting question, though.
- genwin 14y agoMaybe the skydiving community has its own definition of free fall? My books say there can't be any force on you except gravity, which seem to rule out any apparatus intended to slow the fall.
- jws 14y agoDid this guy just jump from the edge of space at maybe more than the speed of sound and you're grousing at him for not falling the longest time? You sir, have high expectations.
- sylvinus 14y agoHe did not pass the speed of sound :(
- MrFoof 14y agoIndeed, he didn't break the speed of sound. When he hit around an estimated 729mph, he was spinning a fair bit. It looked as if he made the decision to attempt to stabilize (I think he mentioned during descent that he thought he was going to pass out) himself at the cost of not breaking the sound barrier.
- monochromatic 14y agoSurely the speed of sound is much lower at that altitude, since it's so cold. Are people talking about the sea-level speed of sound?
- arrrg 14y agoOn their website they say that the speed of sound would be about 690mph at the height that he was expected to reach it, not 768mph – that speed just applies at standard temperature and pressure. I would very much like confirmation on that point, but it seems to me that pointing to the 729mph you saw is no such confirmation.
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- k-mcgrady 14y agoI don't think it has been confirmed yet, he was pretty close.
- thomasilk 14y ago
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- gmaslov 14y agoNot likely. I believe the record holder for longest free fall duration is Valeri Polyakov, at 14 months aboard MIR ;-)
- anonymouz 14y agoI have not seen this noted anywhere so far (comparisons are always with Kittinger's jump duration), but it's actually a great point. Only the longest free fall would have to be counted inbetween station boosts, so it would presumably be a lot shorter (but maybe a lot longer than 4minutes?).
- jlgreco 14y agoWay longer than 4 minutes. Station-keeping boosts on Mir were done only a few times a year (and were usually done by attached resupply crafts). Edit: Here's a cool altitude graph for Mir: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:MirOrbitalManoeuvres.svg&page=1 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:MirOrbitalMan...
- drcube 14y agoI've been in free fall around the sun for about 30 years now, doing around 60,000 mph the whole time. Where's my prize?
- dennisgorelik 14y agoI took it by doing it longer than you.
- thomasilk 14y agoNo, he probably did this to leave Joe Kittinger one of his world records, because Joe was the essential team member who made this mission possible for Felix.
- mittermayr 14y agothat, or the fogged up visor and inability to read altitude meters
- lloyddobbler 14y ago^^ This. Your eyes are your best altimeter, and flying blind isn't ever a good idea...but particularly on a high-stress operation like this one.
- trafficlight 14y agoI highly doubt that.
- jcollins1991 14y agoHe's already said this will be his last jump [1] [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/oct/14/felix-baumgartner-lands-safely-record http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/oct/14/felix-baumgartne...
- at-fates-hands 14y agoIncredible. This kind of stuff puts my faith back in humanity. With all the horrible stuff going in the world, you see something like this and its simply amazing. I actually got teary eyed when he landed and fell to his knees. Such a huge leap for the space program.
- 46Bit 14y agoThis is the big change between now and Kittinger's jump in 1960: private, truly non-governmental* companies can and will achieve incredible things just to market some sugar water. * I see a distinction between companies like SpaceX and those like Lockheed, in the will to do things if nothing else.
- radicaldreamer 14y agoDoesn't that make sense though? 1960 was 50 years ago, the government (or multiple world governments) could be bank rolling a human mission and initial human outpost on Mars right now if that was a priority the public would support.
- 46Bit 14y agoVery true. The question is whether the government saw sense and scaled back it's unsustainable future drive, or whether things just stalled. I'm still undecided.
- aggie 14y agoThe government put a man on the moon so they could appear more technologically capable than the Soviets. Once they got their propaganda piece, the incentive died out.
- pilsetnieks 14y ago- Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world? - Both.
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- Jarihd 14y agoHe was spinning like crazy for quite some time - that literally had my heart beating like crazy - i was like - what's going to happen - is he unconscious - is the automatic parachute ejection not working - then; later was happy to seem him gain control on his free fall. :-)
- mittermayr 14y agoyeah and at exactly the same time communication stopped suddenly ... that was a very horrifying moment indeed
- kalms 14y agoRed Bull didn't want to show it if anything went wrong. That's why it was transmitted with a 20 second delay. My heart skipped a beat or two!
- ninetax 14y agoDoes anyone know where I can see this video? I missed the live jump...
- mittermayr 14y agohere you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETbQv7RC8V8&feature=youtu.be&a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETbQv7RC8V8&feature=youtu...
- k-mcgrady 14y agoNot sure if it's out yet but it will be on Red Bull's Youtube channel (that's where the live stream was)
- thomasilk 14y agoCongrats to Felix and Red Bull! Makes me and so many others proud to be Austrian.
- mittermayr 14y agoGIF of the first five seconds or so http://images.4chan.org/sp/src/1350238600230.gif http://images.4chan.org/sp/src/1350238600230.gif
- djhworld 14y agoI wish the GIF started a few seconds before that, Felix finishes his speech and salutes, then walks forward. That moment gave me chills
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI couldn't imagine the guts it would take to stand on that platform, much less calmly step off.
- barrkel 14y agoIf you've ever gone skydiving, you'll know that once you have trust in the technology that deploys the canopy, you can get fairly blase about the exit. Also, the height becomes sort of abstract above a certain level - even at 3000 feet, the world below doesn't look particularly real, it looks like a very detailed model with cute little moving cars and stuff.
- propercoil 14y agoi confirm
- rquantz 14y agoI haven't gone skydiving, so maybe you know better than I do, but wasn't this exit more perilous than most? He had to leave the platform with as little spin as possible since there wasn't enough atmosphere for him to control his descent. Or maybe they just hyped the danger to make people keep watching?
- tripzilch 14y ago
- mittermayr 14y agoHey, who changed the title? I submitted this as "Austrian" Skydiver shatters world record with 24-mile-leap? What happened, HN?
- fourstar 14y agoKarma police.
- mittermayr 14y agoarggh, Americans you say ;)
- 10dpd 14y agoArrest this man. He talks in maths. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
- 10dpd 14y agoWhy the downvotes for a reference to one of the greatest songs of all time ( Karma Police by Radiohead ) ?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ars 14y agoYou've been here for a year - you should know better. Your message is just noise, and has nothing to do with the topic.
- kahawe 14y agoThis is not reddit.
- tripzilch 14y agoExactly, here on HN we don't need those new-fangled "collapsible comments" like Reddit has. We prefer to treat our threaded comments like mere oddly layouted linear threads and allow no digressions! "Load more comments" and "comment score below threshold" ... we have the technology ...
- nazgulnarsil 14y agoThis might be a silly question, but couldn't his suit have added a tail to help prevent spinning?
- mittermayr 14y agothey also had other ideas like a long heavy ball falling first with a long rope that he's attached to to stabilize as well as small rockets to counter-steer things, but it wouldn't couldn't as a completely free fall somehow, they said.
- lloyddobbler 14y agoMost of those sorts of options will do more harm than good. If you've ever attempted to skydive (or fly in a wind tunnel), you know that the slightest move of one's hand can cause instability, or a spin. It takes a lot of experience to gain enough control to be able to really fly your body (and in the dead air at the altitude of this jump, all previous bets are off). Adding any sort of wings, fins, or whatnot would cause more uncertainty than it would certainty. (This is why wingsuits are so dangerous to fly - the extra surface area means that the subtlest of moves are magnified significantly.) The safest option is a drogue parachute - the small stabilization parachute you see when watching tandem skydiving videos. They kept a drogue as an automatic backup to attempt to stabilize him if he encountered an uncontrollable spin. But even that has its risks. An entanglement on a jump like this (or any jump, really) could be a death warrant.
- matthew-wegner 14y agoProbably not, because he exited at almost zero atmosphere.
- ezequiel-garzon 14y agoCan anyone shed some light on the natural limit for this record?
- lloyddobbler 14y agoAre we talking about the speed record? It depends on a number of variables, most notably being body position and altitude. The higher the altitude, the thinner the air. Whereas terminal velocity at 10,000' MSL (mean sea level) is 120mph, if you go up to 30,000', terminal is faster due to less air molecules to create drag. As for body position, if I'm flying my body belly-to-earth, in a stable arched body position, I'll fall a lot slower than I will flying head-down with my arms tucked to my sides. Apparently, Felix was attempting to increase his speed by flying close to head-down - he flared out in mid-attempt when his visor began to fog and decreased his visibility. (You probably saw the spinning on the video as he reached close to 730mph - to me, that appeared to be the result of him flaring out of his head-down dive to a belly-to-earth body position in the thin air, which doesn't provide a lot of control). Additionally, if he were to make this jump in a latex suit, he'd be moving a lot faster due to decreased drag. (However, he'd also be dead from exposure to cold.) So the "natural upper limit" is basically however fast he went, given the equipment, altitude, and body position. If we change the variables, we'd get a different maximum speed. Terminal velocity is terminal velocity, given all those factors.
- ezequiel-garzon 14y agoThanks for such a thorough reply! I'm very curious about the highest possible (and feasible) altitude. I couldn't find out how high you can go and still fall towards the Earth. (At some point you would just orbit the Earth, right?) Edit: Thanks to both replies. Never mind, then!
- avar 14y agoNo, you won't orbit just by going high enough. To orbit you need to going fast enough horizontally that as you fall you never hit the body you're orbiting. If you just keep going straight up you'll eventually fall back to Earth, or be on your own independent orbit around the Sun.
- psychotik 14y agoAny idea what type of camera was used to track his descent? Satellite imagery?
- dmd 14y agohttp://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/cameras-communications/ http://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/cameras-communicati...
- mittermayr 14y agoi'd love to see some stats on youtube for this. i noticed over 6 million concurrent viewers, flipped to HD and it worked instantly ... it's purely amazing to push out these amounts of video data.
- Jarihd 14y agoLIVE: Press Conference RedBull Stratos http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/ http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/
- InclinedPlane 14y agoConfirmation from the post-jump press conference: mach 1.24.
- Laremere 14y agoOne giant leap for man, one small step for mankind.
- lordlarm 14y agoWell not really that giant leap, since Joseph Kittinger basically did the same jump 50 years ago [1]. He actually was in freefall longer (4min and 36 seconds), which hence is still the world record. Since Felix "only" fell for 4min and 22 seconds. Also, as Neil deGrasse Tyson funnily put it: «I'm told somebody's jumping out of a perfectly good balloon from 23-miles up. The theory of gravity no longer needs to be tested in this way» [2] But still, cool video and congrats to Felix and the Rebull Stratos team. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger [2]: https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/255691761341587456 https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/255691761341587456
- spullara 14y agoKittinger reduced his speed through the use of a drogue chute. Not directly comparable.
- Arjuna 14y agoPreliminary (i.e., non-record certified) telemetry: Exit altitude: 128,100 ft 39,045 m Free-fall time: 4m:20s Free-fall distance: 119,846 ft 36,529 m Maximum velocity: 373 m/s 1,342.8 km/h 833.9 mph Mach 1.24
- bradgessler 14y agoIs breaking the sound barrier noticeable to the sky diver?
- andysinclair 14y agoHe was just asked this at the press conference, and he replied that he felt nothing as he is in a pressurised suit (he could neither feel or hear anything during the fall).
- nikcub 14y agoNo it doesn't. The problem with the sonic boom in fighter jets and the associated forces it produces is because the control surfaces of the planes at the time weren't designed to deal with the effects from supersonic speeds[0], so they would lose control. There is no 'force' associated with breaking the sound barrier, as most would imagine Most of the forces in the freefall would have been G forces from the tumbling or spinning motion as he jumped out. [0] the tl;dr for aircraft is that as you approach and overtake mach 1, at some point the airflow at the beginning of the wing is supersonic while at the rear of the wing it is not, as you accelerate this point moves from the front of the wing to the rear. the problem is that it causes the airflow from that point to separate from the wing which results in a stall, spin, crash etc.
- jasonwatkinspdx 14y agoThis is slightly misleading. There is wave drag, which is caused by the formation of shocks. This happens when the plane/body is nearing the speed of the pressure wave it creates ahead of itself. The air no longer has sufficient time to flow around the body in a smooth (or even turbulent) way. Instead it piles up into sharp discontinuities called shocks, with very low pressure regions behind the shocks. This produces a lot of drag, several times more than that due to viscous drag alone. That's where the concept of a 'sound barrier' came from. People weren't sure what the maximum drag would be, or if we could build engines powerful enough to overcome it. Obviously we can and did. But in the case of free fall from space or near space, the air is so thin that these effects are minimal. Also his starting velocity moving through the thin air is much lower than say a reentering space craft, so the whole thing is much more mild and manageable. By the time the air gets thick enough to worry about, he'll have shed enough speed to even the slight early drag to be at a reasonable terminal velocity. (This is the same concept used by SpaceShipOne's 'shuttlecock' re-entry).
- flyinglizard 14y agoAll the while this kept playing in my head http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrBZeWjGjl8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrBZeWjGjl8
- lordlarm 14y agoTwo funny insights from Neil deGrasse Tysons twitter: «The "Edge of Space" jump: A corresponding fall to a schoolroom globe begins 1 millimeter above its surface. I'm just saying.» [1] «I'm told somebody's jumping out of a perfectly good balloon from 23-miles up. The theory of gravity no longer needs to be tested in this way»[2] Congrats to Felix and his team anyways - great endurance and a great show. [1]: https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/257591067833139200 https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/257591067833139200 [2]: https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/255691761341587456 https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/255691761341587456
- tisme 14y agoI'll bet he would have a different opinion if it was him standing on that little ledge before stepping off.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago> I'll bet he would have a different opinion if it was him standing on that little ledge before stepping off. If he was standing on that little ledge: "The theory of gravity definitely no longer needs to be tested this way. Now let me back in!"
- incision 14y ago>I'll bet he would have a different opinion if it was him standing on that little ledge before stepping off. That doesn't even make sense. You're just being needlessly and nonsensically indignant over a joke from a guy who is hardly unaccomplished himself [1]. Chill out. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson#Selected_awards_and_honors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson#Selected_aw...
- tisme 14y agoOne accomplished person should not be belittling the accomplishments of another. A good check to see if something is a joke is to see if you thought it was funny. To me it looks as if he wants to make this seem totally insignificant, and to increase his own stature by appearing to be above (pun intended) this all.
- andyjohnson0 14y agoFirst Man in Space - Skydiving From The Edge Of The World http://vimeo.com/9980332 http://vimeo.com/9980332
- WalterBright 14y agoI'd like to see if this can be extended to re-entering from orbit. This could make space travel more practical, as there'd be less weight dedicated to re-entry vehicles. (The only thing that needs to come back from orbit is the astronaut. The whole idea of reusable spacecraft is completely impractical, as weight is by far the biggest expense.)
- tisme 14y agoHow are you going to get rid of the horizontal velocity component?
- pferde 14y agoYou simply jump to the east. :)
- dkokelley 14y agoWhile burning off excess speed is one major concern for this approach, I've always wondered what it would take to use a balloon like this one to get past some of the tricky parts of rocketry like dealing with atmosphere and carrying extra fuel to carry the extra fuel you are carrying. If you could launch a rocket from 40km (roughly the height of the balloon), you're 25% into the minimum LEO, and ~10% of the way to the ISS. More importantly, the fuel savings from launching at a higher altitude are exponential, because each meter of altitude is one meter of less atmospheric drag (with diminishing returns) and the corresponding fuel/weight savings from not having to carry fuel to travel the first 40km. I would imagine that the current limitations on doing something like this are related to the maximum weight a hot air balloon can lift, in addition to the untested physics and engineering of a mid-air space launch. Imagine if SpaceShipOne (which was launched at 13.3km) could be taken to 40km and then launched. Perhaps someone with a better understanding of lighter-than-air lift physics could explain what the current limitations on this are.
- goodcanadian 14y agoWithout doing any math, I would think the main constraint is the sheer size of the balloon that you would need to lift any significant mass. That said there are some people who are proposing things like this with at least some seriousness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship
- KevinEldon 14y agoThis was special for me. I wasn't alive when the moon landings or early space program happened. Space shuttles were exciting, but mechanized and somehow predictable; I was probably too young to appreciate them and by the time I was old enough to appreciate what was going on they were routine (even that disasters were disasters not because it was crazy to try an launch some massive machine with a bunch of people in it into space, but because some sort of process or engineering failed... we expected success). This was different. A balloon, a capsule, and a single man with a suit supported by years of engineering and hard work. My whole family watched as Felix stepped out onto the little skateboard sized step; we held our breaths as he jumped. We watched the infrared camera as he started to tumble and I wondered how I would explain his death to my 4-year old who was watching too. I'm glad I didn't have to. I'm glad I get to explain how hard work, engineering, bravery, a very talented team and a little bit of individual craziness can do some amazing things. For me this was special to watch. Thanks to everyone who participated in making this event happen.
- sageikosa 14y agoI guess the best part is that no government funds were expended in the making of this high-tech extreme sport event.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pirateking 14y agoThis is why I drink Red Bull - seriously. Transcendent marketing.
- padraigm 14y agoHere's an interesting coincidence: I noticed that October 14 is also the date that Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 [1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-1
- ezpassmac 14y agoThe BBC is airing a documentary about the fall in 4 weeks. It was 5 years in the making. Should be good.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tripzilch 14y ago"A giant leap for me, a small step for mankind."
- freshfey 14y agoI loved the view from the balloon when he jumped, just incredible. Is there a video of his on-man camera view?
- wr1472 14y agoI suspect this will be shown in the upcoming documentary. I understand the BBC were filming this to be shown in around a month's time (National Geographic will show a 2 hour documentary on this based on the BBC footage).
- mrtriangle 14y agoI was watching this live yesterday and my heart skipped a beat when he took that leap off of the capsule. The balls on that guy.