An Austrian guy jumped from a balloon over a hundred thousand feet up and made a free fall of more than five minutes. Yoiks!
Quick question - isn't "terminal velocity" 120 miles an hour or something? Where does 600 MPH come into play here? More importantly - at what point did he say "Hey! I can see my house from here!" ?
If he were freefalling at 600 mph for 5 minutes, he'd be 103 miles under. Hell, even at 120 mph, he'd be 7 miles under.
So he drilled right into the Earth? Chuck Norris needs to strap on a chute and try this. Steven Seagal needs to try it also, but without the chute!
Worst written artical ever. It's not a record breaking jump. He jumped at 90,000 feet but the record was set by an Air Force captain who jumped from about 110,000 feet.
Oh, did I misread? Was this the test jump before the record-breaker? I had read that he was gonna do a test jump before the big one. He hits 600 mph because at his starting altitude, the "air" is so thin that it offers almost no resistance. As he gets lower, he slows down.
The 120 mph figure only applies below a certain altitude where the air is dense enough to provide resistance. The higher you are, the less air, therefore the faster you can go.
120 MPH * 5 minutes = 10 miles. Jump height was 17 miles. I think you're commuting your subtrahend. For that matter 103 miles under? 600 MPH * 5 minutes is only 50 miles. How the hell did you get -103?
Dude... 600 mph = 10 miles per minute, so after 5 minutes, he would fall 50 miles. 120 mph = 2 miles per minute so 5 minutes = 10 miles. If his average speed is 120 mph, he could free fall five minutes and still be 7 miles above the surface. Just saying.
Well it's a good thing he wasn't using the metric system - he'd either still be falling, or nearing Earth's core by now.
He should have done it in a squirrel suit. If his arms weren't torn off and the atmosphere around him wouldn't kill him that would be really sweet. He needs to build an astronaut-like version and go for it.
