Google Senior VP Falls 26 Miles, Lives To Tell The Tale

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It looks like a new world record has been set for falling from really high places.

A well-known computer scientist parachuted from a balloon near the top of the stratosphere on Friday, falling faster than the speed of sound and breaking the world altitude record set just two years ago. The jump was made by Alan Eustace, 57, a senior vice president at Google. At dawn he was lifted by a balloon filled with 35,000 cubic feet of helium, from an abandoned runway at the airport here.
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I'd do it!

Well if I wasn't a senior VP of a company like Google. But hey even Richard Branson does crazy crap too :D
 
Wow. Didn't even hear about it. The Redbull machine was in full force last time, making it a huge event.

Pretty awesome stuff.
 
bucketlist said:
I don't think that helmet is big enough to hold all my barf.
My stomach turns falling in games. :(
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Wow, drowning in a helmet full of your own vomit while falling to the ground from like 26 miles up. It's these kinda comments that make [H] worth visiting. I mean where else are you going to get things like that?
 
I guess it takes balls, but not that impressive to me as it doesn't exactly take much skill to fall. If you put a sack of potatoes on that balloon, the result would have been the same... sack of potatoes goes up high, falls down. Gravity.
 
Well if he wasn't sponsored by Red Bull and had 50 million cameras pointed at him AND a prime time special, it didn't happen.
 
Ducman69 said:
I guess it takes balls, but not that impressive to me as it doesn't exactly take much skill to fall. If you put a sack of potatoes on that balloon, the result would have been the same... sack of potatoes goes up high, falls down. Gravity.
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True, but not many people can say they have broken the sound barrier during free fall.
 
cubic feet... my head... have mercy... please
 
Grahamkracka said:
True, but not many people can say they have broken the sound barrier during free fall.
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Very skeptical of the claim, actually. Skydivers with limbs outstretched rarely exceed 130 mph in free fall...Streamlined, the falling body might exceed 600MHP, I suppose, in perfect conditions...But faster than 767 MHP and not in some kind of streamlined vehicle? Unlikely, I'd say...
 
WaltC said:
Very skeptical of the claim, actually. Skydivers with limbs outstretched rarely exceed 130 mph in free fall...Streamlined, the falling body might exceed 600MHP, I suppose, in perfect conditions...But faster than 767 MHP and not in some kind of streamlined vehicle? Unlikely, I'd say...
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The speed which sound travels changes with respect to air temperature...and at high altitude, temperature plummets.

700MPH is only on land at/near STP.
 
WaltC said:
Very skeptical of the claim, actually. Skydivers with limbs outstretched rarely exceed 130 mph in free fall...Streamlined, the falling body might exceed 600MHP, I suppose, in perfect conditions...But faster than 767 MHP and not in some kind of streamlined vehicle? Unlikely, I'd say...
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Skeptical of sonic boom maybe, but not the speed. Skydivers rarely exceed 130 mph because they're still relatively low to the ground where the air is still dense. This guy was in the stratosphere where not even commercial jets fly, hell military jets don't fly as high as he went, the air is much much thinner there, and falling fast is not a problem. If anything it's one of those weird things as he falls he'll actually slow down the closer he gets to the ground.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Skeptical of sonic boom maybe, but not the speed. Skydivers rarely exceed 130 mph because they're still relatively low to the ground where the air is still dense. This guy was in the stratosphere where not even commercial jets fly, hell military jets don't fly as high as he went, the air is much much thinner there, and falling fast is not a problem. If anything it's one of those weird things as he falls he'll actually slow down the closer he gets to the ground.
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The speed of sound at that altitude is about 680 mph IIRC. This dude hit about 820 mph. There would have been a sonic boom, but who knows if anyone would actually be able to hear it...I suppose it depends on how high he was whenever the event occurred.
 
Grahamkracka said:
The speed of sound at that altitude is about 680 mph IIRC. This dude hit about 820 mph. There would have been a sonic boom, but who knows if anyone would actually be able to hear it...I suppose it depends on how high he was whenever the event occurred.
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When he broke the sound barrier I could see the ass tearing clean off of his pants and flying off in the distance.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Skeptical of sonic boom maybe, but not the speed. Skydivers rarely exceed 130 mph because they're still relatively low to the ground where the air is still dense. This guy was in the stratosphere where not even commercial jets fly, hell military jets don't fly as high as he went, the air is much much thinner there, and falling fast is not a problem. If anything it's one of those weird things as he falls he'll actually slow down the closer he gets to the ground.
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Yup, terminal velocity is way higher at that altitude than sub-10000 feet.
 
Grahamkracka said:
The speed of sound at that altitude is about 680 mph IIRC. This dude hit about 820 mph. There would have been a sonic boom, but who knows if anyone would actually be able to hear it...I suppose it depends on how high he was whenever the event occurred.
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Very well then, I thought the speed of sound would change a lot more dramatically when the density drops like that, guess not

According to this graph (unknown accuracy mind you) the speed of sound actually flatlines which is quite surprising, I'm guessing there will be some altitude where there's simply no more air and the speed of sound would be zero?
density.jpg
 
sfsuphysics said:
Very well then, I thought the speed of sound would change a lot more dramatically when the density drops like that, guess not

According to this graph (unknown accuracy mind you) the speed of sound actually flatlines which is quite surprising, I'm guessing there will be some altitude where there's simply no more air and the speed of sound would be zero?
density.jpg
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The speed of sound is more dependent on temperature than anything else. It actually somewhat oscillates the higher you go.

atmospheric-layers.gif


atmospheric-layers.gif
 
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