One of the cardinal rules of aviation is to “never fly with anyone crazier than yourself.”
I believe this guy is a candidate for my “no fly” short list:
A retired French army colonel is aiming to take a stratospheric leap into the record books by completing a 1000mph skydive from the edge of space.
Aiming to become the first human being to break the sound barrier in free-fall, Michel Fournier will ascend to an altitude of 25 miles in a helium-filled weather balloon before plunging to earth at supersonic speed…
In the process of le Grand Saut or “Super Jump”, the 63-year-old hopes to complete a lofty hat-trick – breaking records for the highest ever parachute jump, the longest sky dive, and the highest altitude achieved by a person in a balloon.
Mr Fournier will be dressed in a
I’m thinking he’ll end up as mush.
I don’t think he’ll “end as mush” – he’ll be mush long before his jump is over. He can be protected from the sound and temperatures, but what about the pressure?
Hmm — “bonne chance” or intervention?
I call for an intervention. Some doofuses (doofi) just need to be saved from themselves.
Sheesh. Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean that it has to be done at all!
Actually that mad Frog isn’t the first man to jump from so high, or to break Mach 1 without an aircraft. Way back in 1960, Air Force pilot Joe Kittinger jumped from a Helium Balloon at 102,800 Feet and managed to achieve an Airspeed of 714 MPH during his freefall, which at such high altitudes meant he broke Mach 1 during his jump. His descent was slowed by a drogue chute, and his main didn’t open until he was at 18,000 feet.
Kittinger didn’t end up as much, the only injury received was a damaged hand due to the the pressurization on his glove failing…his hand swelled like a baloon. Kittinger was wearing a Mercury style Silver Space suit, and this jump managed to test the viability of the suit for the space program.
Joe Kittinger also shot down a Mig 21 with an F-4 in 1972 and served 3 combat tours during the Vietnam conflict. Unfortunately he was himself shot down shortly after his victory, and spent 11 months as a POW. In 1984 Colonel Kittinger also became the first man to cross the Atlantic solo in a Balloon.
Mad as a hatter maybe, but Kittinger is a hero in my book. So the Mad Frenchmen would only be doing a slightly more dramatic repeat of what has already been done, which does seem to be a habit of the French these days.
By the way, great blog and community Lex, I’m happy to read what you have to say.
Source. http://www.af.mil/history/person.asp?dec=&pid=123006518
Aloha,
William S. Cobb
CFI/MEI Aeroatlanta Flight School
Right you are, Mr. Cobb. Joe Kittinger is a been-there, done-that sort of guy. Don’t forget his pressure suit failures during those jumps. No carbon fiber suit — only the materials and best guess knwoledge of the time.
Type his name into YouTube.com search window and you get damned near a page of videos on his exploits.
Hero? definitely. Nuts? Quite possibly. Or maybe, solid stones.
-SJBill
The French continue to provide solid evidence that the gene pool is, to a certain degree, self-cleaning.
The man sounds like a candidate for the Freeze, Fry and Die Award. I sink zeeze French should stick to their cooking, which they do superbly, and let others with more practicality do the showy things they do so well. I’m recalling the book Warrior Soul, where Chuck Pfarrer, on the last day of his service, did a HALO jump from a 737 burdened with a heavy pack. amd his ‘chute just wouldn’t open. Now there’s a grabber for you. He kept struggling with it, and popping the lines with all his strength, until he was really low. Finally, it partially opened. He landed at about 75 miles an hour, he estimates, broke a lot of stuff and was dragged quite a distance. When he looked at his watch, he found it was past midnight and he was officially retired.
Marianne Matthews
So, what will you all say if/when he jumps successfully? Which, chances are, he will. I’m not saying that he ain’t crazy (he likely is) but…
Will you post the story if he makes it Lex?
We just saw a special on the History Channel (or something similar) about that guy Kittinger and it showed film footage of him jumping from the balloon and I think there was a camera attached to his suit. Way cool.
Hmmm… Little back-of-the-envelope calculations, at 130K feet apmospheric pressure is well below 0.1psi, compared to the 14.7 at sea level and 6.7psi at the top of Everest. Not much to work against ya, so likely gravity will be enough to pull him through Mach 1 until he gets down a ways. The lack of pressure is the most difficult part of the jump, I’d think.
Luckily, adding pressure works a lot better than removing pressure, but during his ascent he’ll have to go slow enough to avoid dysbarism (diving sickness, or the bends as it’s commonly termed). That is not a trivial task in a balloon.
– Max
Hey Michelle, How would you like for that to be your first Freefall?
Ummm…. no thanks!
She may or may not be a little crazy (depending on who you ask) but she ain’t stupid!
Check the August 13 New Yorker for a profile by Burkhard Bilger on Colonel Fournier. Good stuff.
Well, back on 6/30, I posted about the article in Pop Sci about this sort of effort going on here in the States, which includes Armadillo Aerospace making the vehicle to take the dudes to altitude…
In January, I also posted the YouTube clip of Col (then Capt) K doing the got the speed thing….
Geez…you guys are like so far behind….
I’m no aerodynamicist, so I’m wondering why the helmet has to be re-inforced to protect his ears from the sonic boom. The actual sound of the sonic boom, or the pressure wave as it passes over his head?
Regarding the “protection of his ears from the thunderous sonic boom”:
I thought you couldn’t hear your own sonic boom!?! I.E. the boom is “heard” because of the relative motion of the pressure wave to the listener. To the generator of the conical pressure wave, it “appears” as a standing wave with no relative motion, and thus, nothing to hear.
Can those that have first person experience with supersonic flight comment on this?
You can’t hear a thing in an airplane. I always assumed that was because we were, you know: Moving faster than the speed of sound.
Ahem.
When I said he’d end up as mush, it was because of the pressure crushing him on the way down. The article doesn’t say anything about a pressure suit. If he wears one, then I’d say he has a good chance of success. Without it though, I’m sticking with my “mush” theory.
As for the reinforced helmet- I thought the same thing. If you’re breaking the sound barrier, only those around you would know it and be able to hear it. I think.
Lex, when you say you can’t hear a thing at supersonic speeds, do you mean you can’t hear anything at all? No engine noise, nothing in the headset, no nothing?
The crushing him on the way down won’t be a problem so long as he keeps breathing. The pressure of atmosphere rises dramatically, true, but remember every time he breathes he’s equalizing internal and external pressure. The big concern is that the gasses in his blood equalize nearly as quickly. A 1/2psi rise in partial pressures isn’t a big deal, you get that taking off in an airplane. 5psi in a minute is a much graver concern.
On the supersonic boom, he won’t hear a thing from the boom itself. Even thin air moving at 600mph or more creates pressure against the eardrum, though, so he’s going to need a head covering that protects the eyes, ears, and such from 600mph impacts with very small bits of dust, pollen, that sort of thing, and protects the ear canal from the fun pressure changes air moving over an irregular surface like the ear can produce. Even more, the head is a pretty large area, without a lot of structural support. He’s going to need something that helps him hold his head in position as the drag on his helmet increases.
Most importantly, he’s effectively placing himself in a sandblaster until he gets down to probably 60K feet, at which point wind resistance will start to slow him considerably.
All in all, as an engineer I can see where it can be done safely, or reasonably safely. All it’s going to take is one drop of water to ventilate the poor guy above probably 70K feet, and even a pollen spore has a good chance of punching through his skin without some armor on. It really depends upon when he deploys his drogue chute as to how much abrasion he’s going to contend with. That, and at that altitude in such thin air I expect there is no sensation of falling, and no wind resistance to work with to place oneself in a proper drop position. It’s entirely possible he’ll start flipping or spinning and as the air pressure builds his movement will as well. A somersault can be fun, but somersaulting five times per second tends to have some bad effects, centripetal force causing arteries in the brain to burst from increased pressure and other such annoyances.
It’s at this point I wonder if he’s considered the forces against him and, if he has, why on earth he wants to continue. I also wonder about the people designing his suit — are they sure they wish to take on the job knowing a single raindrop will pierce him like a bullet at that speed? Myself, I’d take on the job if it was for exiting the shuttle, but not for some guy who wants to be in Guinness.
– Max
NO Raindrops at that altitude, and with any opposing force, you can control your attitude.
TBS, I am not a Stratospheric engineer, just a former Combat Engineer. and defer to the esteemed MAX Damage.
Do pollen spore’s and raindrop’s punch holes in very thin aircraft skin at mach+ whatever?
Max: There’s nothing to see here from a technology perspective — FAULTY 1960′s equipment was sufficient!
RE — gas in the blood equalizing: Not a problem going from low->high pressure. His pressure suit will keep him at some reasonable fraction of an atmosphere. It’s the going up part that needs careful control and a well designed ballast system should help with that.
RE — wind over the ear canal: What wind? He’ll be inside a full body pressure suit!
RE — sandblaster effect: A) he’s not going *THAT* fast, and B) a grain of pollen or a dust particle doesn’t have enough mass to offer much impact force. Unless a volcano explosively erupts underneath him, there aint much FOD that hangs out in the thin air that a well insulated pressure suit can’t brush aside. C) Rain drops: in the absence of towering cumulonimbus activity, they’re rather hard to find much above 30K ft. By the time he’s down to that altitude, he’ll be decelerating to a more “normal” terminal velocity. It’d certainly add to the drama if he decides to jump into a thunderstorm cloud
RE — tumbling out of control: If there’s enough air resistance to initiate and sustain a violent tumble, why wouldn’t there also be enough resistance to counter it? Additionally, a drogue chute would also provide a sure solution.
All the technical stuff you all are saying is fine. The man is still crazy, certifiable, straight-jacket bound.
” It’d certainly add to the drama if he decides to jump into a thunderstorm cloud” That’s already been done too… Marine Lt. Col Rankin
punched out of his F-8 over a thunderstorm in 1959 I think. Landed several states away from his start point. I read his book as a kid.
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Rode-Thunder/dp/0135482712
I agree with Kris.
He’s fricking nuts.
Cheers.
Theodore, I should have said that you can’t hear the shockwave detaching, since it’s behind you. Since radio waves travel at the speed of light, and the conductive environment of the airplane is also supersonic you can hear all normal cockpit sounds.
Interesting physics. It’s all here under Terminal Velocity:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/JianHuang.shtml
Got it? Now let us apply the terminal velocity calculator at:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/termv.html:
Based on a B2 estimated weight of 250 lbs- (Frenchman+gear ), a nominal cross section of 10 sqft and a start point of 125,000 ft in the ionosphere it is feasible he could reach a terminal velocity of near 1.3M. (nominal 650kts maybe). Terminal velocity for him as he nears the surface is about 145 kts. Theoretically, 15 seconds after he leaps he will reach a terminal velocity of 1.3M, and decelrate/fall over 100000ft until he slows to 145.. Lets see, 650-145= that’s only about a 500kt delta worth of friction…This stunt depends on his equipment and pressure suit.
Heat from friction, G and cold survivability all factors. He may reach 1.3M but he might not get to tell us how it felt because he could be dead!
b2
Exactly, B2. I’ve been pondering this a bit more. The “golden BB” bit of pollen isn’t much of a risk unless there’s turbulence in the air, updrafts and the sort. Yes, they’re light, and small. So is a bullet. E=MV^2 and he’s got a whole bagfull of V. But there’s a lot of atmosphere and little of him so what are the odds?
One that’s causing me to pull what remaining hair I have out is Bernoulli’s Principle and how that’s going to work with such low pressures and high velocity.
ObGeekExplanation: Bernoulli’s Principle is why aircraft fly. As you increase the speed of a fluid, and air acts as one, the pressure drops. So far so good. So we make an aircraft wing and we make the bottom flat and the top sort of curved, so it has a longer length than the bottom. We then fly through the air and the air flowing across the top of the wing speeds up, it having a longer length to pass over, thus the pressure drops, and we have lift. You can think of high pressure on the bottom of the wing lifting the aircraft, but it’s more accurate to think of the low pressure on the top of the wing sucking the aircraft upwards.
So, stick your hand out the window of your car sometime and feel that wind resistance. That’s not just the resistance caused by the high pressure of the air ahead of your hand, it’s also the low pressure of the air behind your hand working in concert.
There are not a lot of square inches to your hand. There are a lot of square inches to his body, especially in some sort of lightweight pressure suit (and carbon fiber tells me they went for light weight and minimal area). Toss in ten times the speed, or 100x the wind resistance, and the equations just start getting surreal real fast. Once past Mach the air doesn’t flow around you. It parts, and you’re dragging a huge vacuum behind you. This changes things dramatically, and is the reason the speed of sound was indeed a barrier for so long.
I wish him luck. With a nice drogue chute deployed soon after the jump he should be fine. If he wants to cowboy his way down the physics rapidly reach numbers we normally don’t see in building bridges, but approach those involving explosives.
I don’t do this sort of work for a living, my calculations could be off a bit, and of course the ascent is probably the most dangerous part for him. Still, while possible, taking such a risk just to be in a record book is not something I could professionally lend my support to.
– Max
[...] on the more serious side, think about being a bona fide astronaut and, having scoffed at skydivers all these years (for no real aviator would jump out of a ‘perfectly good’ airplane) and now you are in [...]
Agree… Michel is crackers…all this effort and expense to ultimately place second in a two man race…but on the up side… I did enjoy the techno/geek discussion. Best
Re B’s principle: there is no sucking, only pushing. gravity sucks, its much nicer in space…but the atmosphere only pushes, Gas molecules bangin’ around and all that. (press?sure.)
N