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So the guy straps himself to balloon, rides straight up for 2 hours, 25 miles high. So 12.5 mph, a little faster than the average bicycle pace. Straight up. W
by aresant 12y ago
So the guy straps himself to balloon, rides straight up for 2 hours, 25 miles high.
So 12.5 mph, a little faster than the average bicycle pace. Straight up.
Works with other engineers in secret for 3 years to knock out a badass space survival suit.
And then, just for us kids, "cut himself loose from the balloon with the aid of a small explosive device . . ." and achieves 800mph+, setting off a "small sonic boom".
I !@%! love engineers.
- kyro 12y agoLots of things make me regret not studying engineering, but this certainly takes the cake and the entire bakery.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoIts never too late. Start now.
- thrownawaya 12y agoSays the guy with the user name toomuchtodo...
- toomuchtodo 12y ago31 year old Operations/DevOps at a startup. I still find time to build CNC mills from scratch, and my current/long-term project is building a 40' sailing vessel for a circumnavigation. I have no college education. I can weld (quite well), I've built 3d models for laser sintering, I've assembled carbon fiber body panels. If you want to do something, learn how to do it. Then go do it!
- sillysaurus3 12y agoUnfortunately, this only tends to work during periods of economic prosperity. When times get tough, those without credentials usually seem to be the first to be ousted. But I've long wondered whether that's true. How'd you fare during 2008? It'd be nice to collect some datapoints from someone else. The phenomenon seemed most true just after The Bubble. I think tptacek mentioned he had some pretty substantial credentials yet finding a job was extraordinarily difficult.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoFaired okay in 2008. Company I was working for went out of business (was IT manager making $96K/yr), was hired 3 months later to do IT operations for datataking for a detector at the Large Hadron Collider ($86K/yr). Managed ~6K linux boxes, had a good time, learned what essentially became my DevOps career. Left after a year to go back into the private sector for a $40K/year salary increase managing datacenters. I've only been asked 3-4 times about my college education (or lack thereof), and its never stopped me from getting a job. YMMV.
- navr 12y agothis can happen only in NA: people w/out school lead data centers. I know a Sociologist who was a Director of IT Strategy and Planning, a retail salesman and Preacher becoming Oracle Developer (I had to visit internal establishments of a big job agency just to see who is it that they are hiring for Oracle positions because I, who started doing Oracle with it's first commercial version, Oracle 5 Beta in 1988., and worked in and around Oracle ever since, was certainly not amongst those lucky souls. They even told me, just before the Internet Bust 2000-2002 that "they will not be recommending me for Oracle projects"!? I made sure that in the last 14 years, every 6mths or so I send an email to that person starting always with that quotation and always reminding him that I was the state Champion of Math and Physics at the age of 17 and never mentioning my University Electrical Engineering degree and M.Sc. Computer Science including 25 years of experience in IT - btw, in order to feed my family, back in the 90s, I had to go low level, deep down low where no shoe salesman can ever go, writing STREAMS drivers and Unix communication gateways - ALL other positions were taken by people not educated in IT, computer science and electrical engineering. 2000s improved a bit: they started hiring Chemical and Mechanical engineers in IT as well, but not computer science and electrical engineers. Nowadays still 80% of IT positions are taken by intruders in the field!), etc. etc. NA led world to this Slump of All Slumps from which it will never recover, read my lips
- JasonFruit 12y agoReading what you wrote, I wonder if you've considered that there might be non-technical, more personal reasons you've had a hard time finding employment in your field. Holding a 14-year-long nastygram-writing grudge against a job agency doesn't seem like the best use of your clearly valuable time. I really mean no offense here; I've had to make some adjustments in my way of dealing with people over the years, as well.
- jonmrodriguez 12y agoThat's badass!
- toomuchtodo 12y agoThank you!
- shostack 12y agoCurious if you happen to have a significant other or family that would consume a significant chunk of your potential free time.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoI built my CNC mill with my wife. She's helping me build my boat. We've been married 6 years, and we enjoy working on projects together. We also try to spend as much time with extended family as possible.
- shostack 12y agoAwesome, glad to hear you've been able to find a balance. Sounds like a big part of that is your shared interests in these areas with your wife which allows you to focus the time there. Out of curiosity, how much technical knowledge was needed for the CNC mill?
- toomuchtodo 12y ago> Awesome, glad to hear you've been able to find a balance. Sounds like a big part of that is your shared interests in these areas with your wife which allows you to focus the time there. Most definitely. I'm not a sit on the couch and watch TV sort of guy. I need to be doing something, and I love that my wife loves to join me in my endeavors. > Out of curiosity, how much technical knowledge was needed for the CNC mill? 6-8 hours of research.
- el_benhameen 12y agoThanks for validating my attempted trajectory. It's really encouraging to hear stuff like this. Kudos to you for making life just as you want it.
- ultimoo 12y agoDon't feed the trolls.
- gonzo 12y agoI can also weld, and never finished the degree. I've played some with CF, and rather than build one, I bought a CNC mill. My son had an idea, so I learned injection molding (smallworks.com). Companies I've helped start have both cratered (Vivato) and had successful exits (Wayport). I'm 52.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoI'd love to buy you a beer or coffee sometime and chat about our shared interests!
- joshu 12y agoPlease talk more about the CNC mills, as this is my current obsession.
- malandrew 12y agoI would love to see details on your 40' sailing vessel project. How much of it is your own design and how much of it involves relying on designs from others.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoI'll have details up on my blog someday! I rely heavily on other designs, as I'm no nautical engineer, but I do pull elements from different craft designs (its a catamaran).
- bartwe 12y agoFamily life will slow those plans down considerably
- toomuchtodo 12y agoLife is all about prioritizing the things that are important to you. If I have to work less to still work on projects and have a family life, I can do that.
- godzilla82 12y agoThat also depends on the population of your country! In India, you are worthless without a degree. People look down on non engineers. Even bachelor of science in computer science is considered crap. Your value as a developers depends only on how many other developers are out there.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoWow. I am terribly sorry to hear that. :(
- kamaal 12y agoEngineering is simply systematic application of thought to solving problems. Breaking problems to smaller logical solvable units and then just solving them. Engineering is not reading a few books and appearing for exams.
- _random_ 12y ago...at the age of 57.
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- slazaro 12y agoBecause people that do these kind of things are usually in their twenties or thirties.
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- Retric 12y agoIt's rare for crazy people to survive that long ;) Actually, IMO it's much more reasonable to take up risky hobby's late in life. Only real issue is your reflexes are slower and your recovery times are longer, but I don't see either of those being an issue for this kind of stunt.
- nb4hnp 12y agoIt also helps to have a shitload or two of money lying around.
- jMyles 12y agoMark Hunt will fight for the UFC Heavyweight championship on November 15. He's 40. It's not 57, but still interesting to see athletes push themselves into later ages than their competition. In highly technical sports like MMA, the knowledge and muscle memory must be a pretty big advantage, but unlike this stunt, reflexes and recovery times are very much at issue. :-)
- recursive 12y agoIt is totally sweet, but as an irrelevant aside, I think you have been hanging around some very slow bicyclists. Unless you're talking about biking straight up.
- differentView 12y agoHe stated "average bicycle pace", not average competition bicycle pace.
- recursive 12y agoClearly it's an unpopular opinion, or it's just off-topic, or maybe both, but I've always considered an average bike pace to be 15mph, which is a far cry from a bike race, unless maybe it's up a mountain or something.
- dshankar 12y agoPointing out the difference between 12.5mph and 15mph is pedantic and doesn't contribute to the discussion.
- kazinator 12y ago15 mph is 20% faster than 12.5 mph. A 20% difference is arguably significant in the context. Going 20% faster on a bike relative to 12.5 mph requires more than 20% more effort, too. 8 is also 20% of 40, so 20% faster is like the difference between a ho-hum 48 minute time for a 10 km footrace, versus just cracking sub-forty. 20% faster can be a huge difference in fitness level.
- agumonkey 12y agoSuch level of badasserie is hard to top. So pure.
- cdnsteve 12y agoI wonder what this feat ended up costing in comparison to Felix or those who scale Everest? I have a feeling it was far far less. I wonder when he'll start working on his first space capsule/micro ship next :)
- bengali3 12y agoAlso remember, Google has had a high altitude balloon program in R&D for a while. http://www.google.com/patents/US8634974 http://www.google.com/patents/US8634974 So I would wager this was a much lower cost than Felix, who had a lot of custom work done for the sake of marketing.
- peter303 12y agoEverst averages $35K to $50K. A breakdown of individual expenses involved: The government permit is the largest individual cost. http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2014/01/06/everest-2014-the-cost-to-climb-everest/ http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2014/01/06/everest-2014-the-...
- dangerboysteve 12y agoExactly. No Red bull capsule and probably 1/100th the cost.
- downandout 12y agoHe had a team of engineers work on this for three years. Something tells me it cost more than 1% of the Red Bull event.
- sopooneo 12y agoCan someone with some insight or relevant expertise explain why a "small explosive device" was the best way to detach? I would think there would be all sorts of mechanical hook/release devices already in existence, and designed for loads as big as him with his suit. Maybe they had to worry about ice binding such things shut? But mostly, if you're strapped to tanks of pure oxygen, wouldn't you want to avoid proximity to any sort of combustion? Please note that I am confident his choice here was the correct one, I just want to understand why.
- mturmon 12y agoSo-called "explosive bolts" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotechnic_fastener http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotechnic_fastener) are very commonly used in spacecraft to separate various spacecraft components (e.g., rocket stages, or payload from shroud). I'm not familiar with the design considerations here, but lots of people remark that they seem like "the wrong solution". But, they are reliable, simple, and light weight.