TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Jumps From Space

two thousand twelve. It is titled tech Stuff Jumps from Space and Yes, this was when we were talking about a space jump when a capsule that was raised up by very strong balloons, uh, was taken to the very edge of space and we got to experience what it was like to jump out of it as we watched in first person view, and it was absolutely exhilarating or terrifying, depending on your point of view. In this episode, Chris and I talked about that entire mission and what it

took to achieve eve it. I hope you guys enjoy. Earlier this week, as of the time we're recording this, a fellow named Felix baumb Gardner did something pretty phenomenal. Yes, actually he fell nice, He fell a lot. Yeah, he fell more than any man has ever fallen before, right in space. No one can hear you fall. As a matter of fact, Uh, you know, you said that it's

been in the news. I think this is going to captivate people's attention for a long long time because I don't know that anybody is ready to better this brand new And he said, and this record was set more than you know, forty years after the last one, so uh so, yeah, it's been a while. So what what we're talking about is the Red Bull Stratos jump sponsored

by Red Bull. Was this crazy the attempt to break some world records and many world records were broken, actually three three, you know, the four that they were aiming for they broke. If you're curious about the one they did not break, it was for longest freefall. Uh And I think they were going by longest as in uh time,

really they were looking at the time. It's kind of interesting because according to what they were they were going by the person who had the the record for the highest jump previously, which was a uh that Air Force United States Air Force colonel named Joseph Kittinger and his name pronounced Kittinger. And on the news report that I, okay, I don't know that Kittinger um at any rate he in in. Uh. He did several jumps for the Air Force to kind of test what this, how how could

a human survive in a high altitude jump? And one on one of those jumps he fell for four minutes and thirty six seconds before deploying his main shoot. However, Uh, he did use a drogue shoot, which is a smaller shoot not meant to uh, to slow you to the safe speed, but rather to help guide your descent because well we'll get into why that's important. But he had that deployed in his jump. However, Uh, if you're really going to be a stickler, then uh two years later.

That was in nineteen sixty two years later. So nineteen sixty two, Eugene Andreev jumped from an altitude of around eighty three thousand, five hundred twenty three feet, which is around twenty five thousand, four hundred fifty seven meters uh over Russia, and um he fell for eighty thousand, three hundred eighty feet or four thousand, five hundred meters before

deploying his shoot without using a drugue shoot. So, depending on the way you look, get his is the longest free fault because there was no drug shoot deployed anyway, uh baumb Gardner's fault did not last that long before deploying his shoot. It was four minutes twenty two seconds if I recall correctly, So he did not break that record. However, other records he definitely did break. And it was a

remarkable achievement on multiple fronts. I mean, just human endurance to be able to handle that kind of uh battering about you get in a jump of that size, as well as the technical uh achievements that we made in order to make this possible. So we wanted to talk a little bit about why this is such a challenging thing to take on and the kind of stuff he used to achieve it. And and of course this was a huge effort. I mean, this is not one guy going up in a plane and jumping out and deploy shoot.

I mean he there was There was a huge team in place to bring this about. And of course, as Jonathan has already mentioned, this is not an effort that was backed by a government. This was completely private, um, which you know, in some respects makes things easier. Um. And yes, they didn't use any kind of spacecraft. They did have a pressurized capsule that was lifted into place

by a very very tall balloon. Yeah. Actually the balloon got less tall as it got as it gut further up in the atmosphere because of the changes in pressure. In fact, that's probably the first thing we should talk about, is the air pressure and why uh, you know, why there were so many things need to be in place in order for him to have a successful jump. Um air pressure changes at elevations, right, so uh, you know

it makes sense. You you figured when you think about the Earth and you think about the atmosphere around the Earth, Well, if you're on the surface of the Earth, you've got more atmosphere above you pressing down on you than you would if you were quite a bit of the ways up.

And so at sea level you have one atmosphere of pressure. Now, if you're wondering, well, what does that mean in terms of other units, that's that's just under fifteen pounds per square inch or and you're welcome Europe that I did this one point oh three kilograms per square centimeter. But one atmosphere is a much easier way of saying that.

So that's at sea level, and that's the average. Okay, So even even at sea level, that number of changes somewhat, but the average is that number now at thirty five thousand feet, which is, you know, around where a lot of commercial air flights might be somewhere around in that area, which is ten See I did this all the way around. It's about three and a half pounds per square inch, so remember it at C level fifteen pounds feet around

three and a half pounds. That, by the way, is a point to five ms per square centimeter uh and UH or point to four atmospheres. At around sixty two thousand ft or nineteen thousand meters, the pressure has reached a point where it's it's so um so much less than what we experience that we can have some pretty serious health risks. Um. You know, we're we've evolved on this planet to to be able to survive in the conditions of our environment. So you know, we're used to

having this certain amount of air pressure. Beyond that we don't do so well. And if the pressure is too light, then our our blood can actually start to have gas form within it and then it'll will expand, which is called ebulism. And it is not a good thing to have happened to you. So that's why pressure is a big deal. And of course we haven't even reached the the height of the where the jump was because the goal for this jump was to jump out at around

a hundred and twenty thousand feet uh. In actuality, he got all the way up to around a d one hundred feet, which is thirty nine thousand, forty five, which is just over twenty four miles up or thirty nine kilometers for those of you who wanted to, you know, not divide that number of meters there. Um, it took

about two hours from to get there. But at that at that elevation, air pressure is less than one pound per square inch or less than point oh seven kilograms per square centimeter or or point zero seven atmospheres, so you're talking about very little air pressure at all. And because of that, both the capsule he was in and of course the suit he was wearing needed to be pressurized so that he would not have any major health risks when he when he jumped out or just from

the ascent. So the capsule was was pressurized first, and it was done that way so that he would not have to pressurize his suit from the from the ground as they started to ascend um. By having it in the capsule, it took some of that that that power, that energy that was needed off the the actual suit, which is good. You want to preserve that as much as you can. Once they reached the float height, which is where the balloon was not going to rise any

higher and not as high as it was going to go. Uh, then that was when it was time to open up the door and start off the jump. Well, that that's where they had to depressurize the cabin and pressurize the suit. Actually pressurize the suit first, obviously very important step, but then depressurized the cabin so that they could open up the door, because you can't open that door otherwise there's

too much pressure on the inside. It's just like if you're in an airplane and you have the emergency exit, the emergency exit, if you are at altitude, it's going to have so much tremendous amount of pressure on the inside because the airplane itself is pressurized while the outside is not. You can't open that door. You're just not physically strong enough. Same thing here. UM. Once it was de pressurized, he could open up the door. His his suit had been pressurized. UM, and that was what gave

him that safety of at least from the environment. I mean, there's so many other things you have to worry about, but as far as air pressure goes, that was how they took care of that. And of course all the different parts of his suit were sealed so that there wouldn't be any leaks like the The gloves had uh these these rotating locks on them so that you could not have them airtight with the suit, as as well

as the helmet. UM. This was really important because I Kittinger had a jump where he had a hole in one of his gloves and um, apparently the the glove ended up for the pressure, it ended up sticking to his hand enough so that it wasn't a huge problem. H And he did not report this to ground control because of fear that they would cancel the jump. And but by the time he landed there was a problem.

His hand started to swell and apparently swelled to about twice the size of normal UH due to the UH the changes in pressure and and and and so that's something you don't want to have happen if you can avoid it. That's true, that's true. Yeah. The the suit was actually made by a company from Massachusetts. David Clark. Um, they made suits for the Geminy missions as well as Space Shuttle missions, Gemini missions. If that sounds like an internal joke, it it sort of is. You gotta listen

to you. Previous Space podcast. We did a series on the Gemini missions a few years ago. One of the uh astronauts from that time kept pronouncing it Geminy, and Jonathan's blood pressure just kept rising every time he said it. Jimminy Cricket. Yeah, so yeah, it was the same company that did that. They've they've made all kinds of suits for aeronautics and space for decades now. So um, you know they're they're well known, well respected firm to to

have done that. And obviously since the jump was successful and no spoilers intended, but you know, well it's nice to know. It's must say. You can't really spoil something that already happened. Um, well know, if somebody's just now hearing about this, yeah, well then you have been hiding in a hole. You can you can watch actually watch this live when it happened, and from about an hour into it. I turned it on after he'd been on for an hour because the ascent took just over two

hours to get to the right altitude. So UM, Jonathan told me about how he felt when bum Gardner opened the capsule door and started to step out, and they call him fearless Felix, that's the nickname he is. Sheer terror was what was going through me seeing his Yeah, well we'll get into it. But but to go back to the suit, it also could withstand temperatures as low as minus ninety degrees fahrenheit or minus sixty eight celsius or over one degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven point eight

degrees celsius. So also very important because of course at that elevation you were also talking about very very cold temperatures. Um and in fact, there were parts of his fall that were colder than others. It was interesting because it it actually warmed up a little bit from um, I forget fresh No no, no, no, no, not friction. I'm just talking about the ambient temperature actually warmed up, like there was a point in the atmosphere. Yeah. No, I

was watching and they talked about it too. They said, well, you know, closer to the sun. I'm like, really, you're not that much closer The Sun's ninety three million miles away. I think a few feet isn't a huge difference, but but it was interesting. You could watch and the temperature

gauge was going up. It went really low and then started creeping up again, just slightly, not like it wasn't like skyrocketing, but at the height where he was jumping at, the temperature was around minus ten fahrenheit, which is minus twenty three celsius. So I blame house. Yeah, methane production. Is that what you're talking about? Okay, I was trying to see where you're going there. Note not based on scientific fact, mostly because I just wanted to say cows.

So yeah, So the suit had to be able to withstand these cold temperatures as well. And uh, his suit also had very It looked a lot like the space suits you would see, uh you know in any NASA presentation or if you watch any of those launches. It looks a lot like those. Actually, it also looked a little bit um just from appearance's sake, uh, sort of like the stuff that race car drivers wear, probably mostly because the you know the names and the de cows

and things, right. Yeah, So it also had it also had a sun visor that that Felix could put down or up if he needed to. Uh, and the the visor itself was heated in order to have it u avoid icing issues. You know, obviously if you're if you're going through super cold temperatures and you've you know, we give off a lot of water vapor, as it turns out, and could there could be a lot of icing problems, both on the inside and outside of a suit. And uh.

In fact, that was one of the issues that almost seemed to be a big problem during the the ascent, because it looked like, according to Felix, that the face plate was not heating properly. And uh, you know they I think the first time I heard about that was when he was around eighty thousand feet or so and

still rising, obviously still climbing. And and then you hear the people on who are speaking during the whole ascent, you know, the people who are relaying information to the audience, saying, everyone, here's trying to find out what options we have, And I'm like, wow, what options do you have? And the the option, the biggest, like last ditch option thing, you know, in order to get him back to Earth safely. You

you you ditch the jump. But the capsule itself was connected to the balloon and hat and could disconnect and had its own parachute. So the worst case scenario, uh, action would be to cut the tie to the balloon, to deploy the parachute on the capsule and have the capsule come down to Earth. Now that was not ideal, uh most well, first of all, you're aborting the jump, so that's not ideal. But also it would have been

a bit of a rough landing. Now, the capsule itself had a crash sections built into it, crash pads to absorb some of that impact if it were to um to have to land now. And and of course they did detach the capsule at the end of the jump anyway, because they wanted to retreat the capsule. But um uh, you know, it's deaf. Would not have been a soft landing. It would have been a little rough. And it's interesting because the inside the capsule again looked very much like

the Gemini capsules. Um it was. It was a tiny little thing. Really. The capsule was six ft tall or one pot eight meters and it weighed pounds or one thousands And yeah, I mean you take a look at this and you're like, wow, this looks like it would fit, you know, in a in a special casing on the top of a rocket. It really did look like some of those early NASA spacecraft. True enough, So should we

talk about the about the jump? Sure? Um, I mean there's other there are other things actually before I want to talk about the balloon. I want to talk about the balloon because the balloon is crazy, so it has its own story, actually five or so of them. Well, the the weird thing I thought, the strangest thing to me about the balloon was how incredibly thin that material was. So uh it's it was made out of polyethylene plastic film and it was point zero zero zero eight inches thick.

That's pretty thin. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty thin. Or point zero zero zero two point zero zero zero two centimeters thick. There we go, We're gonna get that number right, um, but yeah, super super thin. They called it a forty acre dry cleaner bag because it was essentially made of

very similar stuff. Now, if you're thinking like, how could that possibly bear the weight of this capsule, which you know weighs quite a bit, uh, the real the way they did it was they used this load tape that was connected to the balloon, and the load tape was

actually what bore the load of the capsule. The tape also had in it a special reflective material so that the balloon would show up on radar, very important for any aircraft in the area, although of course the mission was working along with air traffic controllers to make sure there wouldn't be any problems on that because you know, you can't really direct where a balloon is going to go. You are you are at the mercy of the winds.

Although this was over the desert in the southwestern United States, it was populated areas right near Roswell, New Mexico, so it's really just the military and aliens that were there. By the way, I'm totally joking. The whole Roswell alien thing is absolutely ludicrous. But anyway, um so, yeah, and that balloon was created by a t a aerospace and uh, here's some here's some stats on the balloons, some some for people who are curious about how big this was.

So uninflated it was one ft long or one point six meters now at the height once it was inflated, and which takes about an hour. Takes an hour to inflate this balloon with helium. They used helium because it's a nonflammable very important. If you've been wondering why there's a helium shortage, Yeah yeah, talk about that's a big balloon fill up with helium. Yeah yeah. The yell HC might have a few things to say to Felix. Explain to your kid why she can't get a door a balloon,

now you know? So, yeah, just getting the door balloon filled with hydrogen. I can't imagine how anything bad happening from that. Take it to a birthday party. Don't do that. Hydrogen is highly flammable. That's why they went with helium

the candles. So the height of balloon once it was fully inflated at takeoff was about five or one hundred sixty seven point six meters, and once it reached its altitude, the height was more like three hundred thirty four point eight two ft or a hundred two point one because, again, as it got higher up in the atmosphere, the atmospheric pressure decreased, the balloon started to um. The height began

to decrease, but it's it's diameter increased. They began to round out quite a bit because when you first looked at it looked like a tear drop. It was kind of tall and skinny, really compared compared to what we think of when we do think of birthday party balloons, you know, I mean those are tear drop shaped too, but not this is a lot longer than that, right, So once it got up to the mushroom here, yeah, yeah, it definitely rounded out as it got higher up and uninflated.

It weighed a smelt three thousand seven eight pounds or one thousands you just wanted to say smelled, I did. And yeah, and it also had a vent so that it could vent off helium. Now this is also really important. You know what bugs me? It didn't It didn't vent anger, it vented helium. Yeah. No. The the reason for the vent is very important because the helium was expanding as the balloon was climbing, right, So at there does come a point where there's a possibility that that expansion could

damage the balloon itself and tear the balloon. So the balloon needed to have a way of venting out excess helium in order to avoid that. And in fact, they did vent helium at least once or twice, especially once they passed that hundred twenty thousand feet mark, because again was their goal, and they went right by it and kept on going. Um, so, you know, there was a point where there was some concern about making sure that the the balloon and capsule maintained integrity because it was

starting to go beyond what they had planned. So as as long as they didn't run into any wire coat hangers, because that's was to be the downfall of most dry cleaner bags. Right, Yeah, that's exactly the problem. Jonathan from two thousand nineteen here to interrupt this classic episode before we take any more leaps, we're gonna take a quick jump over to a break to thank our sponsor. They had nine high definition cameras that were mounted on both

the suit and on an inside the capsule. So they had cameras mounted on on these arms pointed back at the capsule, so you could get these great views of the capsule as it was going up, also as the door opened, which that's the part where I was terrified,

and I'll talk about that in a second. But there are also cameras on the suits they could capture footage during the actual jump and plus beyond that they had a helicopter that was using a camera mounted on a stable as Asian gyroscope to track Felix's movements, and they had ground cameras on these huge trucks with these uh, these enormous basis that were motorized, so they could track the progress of the balloon. And it it's phenomenal to me because you think, that's a balloon that is more

or less twenty four miles up in the air. So to have a camera that can capture something that's that far away is pretty amazing. You know. You think about that for a second, you're like, well, yeah, I've got a digital zoom on my camera because at the one point seven and well, this camera can capture something that's twenty four miles away. Well, tracking the balloon was a whole lot easier than tracking Felix after he stepped out of the capsule. Right, he's much first of all, Uh, yeah,

he doesn't reflectively smaller, although not that much smaller. It's the six ft tall capsule. He was moving a whole lot fast. Yes, yes, because he was he was going downwards. Um,

and yeah, that was that was definitely. I mean, the the footage that they captured was pretty phenomenal, and especially when you sit there and think about the challenges involved and and beyond that, not just capturing the footage, but transmitting the footage, getting that live feed from the capsule, You're thinking, wow, that's they had to dedicate a lot of bandwidth, you know, in order to get that information from the capsule to the ground and streaming out live.

And in fact, they had three dedicated video down links with built in redundancy to get that information down to the ground, and then they had a fiber optic network on the ground to process that information. And they had live switching so they could switch you know, different cameras at different times to give the best angle or the best camera experience at any given moment, which was pretty you know, this was it was clearly something that the

whole media side of it was. There was a lot of thought put toward it, which is sure you know that that's so getting to the actual jump, once they got to the point where uh, they had reached the right altitude, uh, they had to go through a a very long checklist to make sure that everything was prepared before the jump, and that involved pressurizing the suit, disconnecting the suits from the suit from the capsule because things, the capsule had its own oxygen supply, because again at

that elevation, uh, the atmosphere is so thin that we would not be able to breathe up there. So the capsule it's own oxygen supply, and then the suit did as well. So he had to detach the suit from the capsule because clearly you can't jump if you're still got all these hoses connected where you can, No, it would not go well. So there was that there was the whole deep pressurization, opening up the door, moving the

chair around quite a bit. The chair inside the capsule could move forward and backward a little so that he could reach various controls um and it was the point where he had to move the chair back. He had depressurized the capsule, pressurized the suit, the door had opened, and then they used an exterior camera to capture the moment where he moves. He's lifted his feet up so they're above the threshold of the little capsule door, and then he moves the chair forward, which means his feet

come out of the doorway and over nothing. And that's where I freaked out. That point he was he had to stand on a platform that was about the size of an average skateboard. Yeah, and there he isn't a space suit standing on a skateboard sized platform, holding onto these rails that are on either side of the capsule door. And uh, once he had to go ahead, he let go and started falling. And I don't think I breathed until until he stopped spinning. So here's one of the

issues about jumping at that height. So again, atmosphere is really thin, right, you don't immediately start to slow down. In fact, the atmosphere is so thin that you will go faster than you would if you jumped from uh, you know, any other height. Like you know, you don't have anything pushing against you, or not not as much pushing against because there is atmosphere out there, it's just

not as much it's in the stratosphere at this point. Yeah. Um. And in case you're wondering, I happened to catch a news report in which they had asked him, and Felix said that he didn't look down, he was looking straight out, which at that at that altitude, I'm not sure how you could avoid it because the earth is you could see the curvature of the Earth, and you're going, Okay, that's that's something else that's kind of interesting is that curvature.

You can see it at that altitude. But uh, the if you look at the footage from the jump, the curvature is incredibly evident. Like you, it's just it's it's it's obvious. The reason it's obvious is because the camera lens, it's a wide angle camera lens, so it artificially has bent the edges so it looks like the the curvature is much more It looks how much further up than he really was. Um. But in reality that you could you from what I've been told, you can see the

curvature at that altitude. It's just not as dramatic as what it appeared as on the live stream. So I just wanted to point that out. But but at that altitude, he he um. He moved very quickly into a very fast speed thirty two ft per second per second or nine point seven five four per second square that's the acceleration of gravity. People, if you if you are, if you are at all interested in physics, you will memorize that and use it all the line. So he rapidly

increased to that speed. His his his top speed uh is estimated because we at the time of the recording of this podcast, we do not have the final information. But his top speed was estimated at eight hundred thirty three point nine miles per hour or one thousand, three hundred forty two point eight kilometers per hour mock one point to four. Yes, so mock being the speed of sound. He had broken the sound barrier, the first human to

do so un unaided by any sort of vehicle. Yes, And that's another interesting point than the interview with the scientist that I had watched said that the speed of sound is a little different at that altitude. To write sound, sound travels, you know, the speed of sound is dependent upon the medium through which it's traveling. Sound will travel at a different rate of speed depending on if you are in you know, it will travel at different race

speed from sea level two feet. Uh. It travels at a different rate if it's through water or through a solid. So um, yeah, it's one of the In fact, we should might as well. This is a little bit of a tangent, but lights the same way light travels at you've heard of the speed of light being a constant that's true, but that's talking about the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light will change depending

on what it's traveling through. Now most of the time, for us as human beings, that changes uh imperceptible to us without incredibly sensitive measuring equipment. So to us, it's you know, going at at the speed of light or just a hair under the speed of light is effectively the same thing for us. And I've tried to observe that myself at my home, but I keep getting dust in my eye every time I open that little bag and it doesn't seem like there's any light in there

at all. But it may be the dust. I can't tell right inside your vacuum now, so you should go with the dice and that's the bag, clear. Ye. Chris and I are going to freak out a little bit more about jumping out of a capsule and space, but before we get to that, let's take another quick break. It's funny because when you get the idea of somebody jumping out of an airplane, you're doing a traditional skydive. Most of us have a pretty good idea of what

that quote unquote looks like. You you you stand in the door. You jump out of the plane and you instantly put out your arms and legs and you just sort of glide until you feel like it's time to open your shoot. Then you pull it and go. Well, Felix wasn't as graceful, but it wasn't his fault. See is it is? It turns out that whole atmosphere being thinner thing kind of affects the way you fall at that he couldn't use air resistance to help orient himself,

because that's one thing. Experienced sky divers can do all sorts of really cool maneuvers while they're while they're diving, and it's all due to the whole air resistance and being able to use their bodies to angle in certain ways.

Either they can do a you know they can They can try to resist or change their wind resistance, like like reduce it to a point where they're falling very very very fast, or they can try to increase their wind resistance by increasing the surface area as much as possible. They could do somersaults and other kinds of tricks, but at that altitude there wasn't enough air, not enough atmosphere to be able to do that. So there wasn't. There

wasn't that level of control, and so Felix did start spinning. Uh. And if you watch the video, that also was terrifying because you could see him spinning around and around. You're like, okay, I sure hope he's able to maintain consciousness not black out because uh, Kittinger said, you know, he blacked out during his fall because of a similar issue, and that's

why the drug shoot was so important, was too. It was actually I think it was not the hundred and two thousand foot jump, but the previous one that can Kilden did where he blacked out, And so that's why the drove shoot was so important for him. Um in his in his highest jump, well, yeah, you could see that spinning happening. But then once once he did start hitting the the next levels where the atmosphere is starting to to increase in density, he was able to orient

himself into a traditional skydive position, the delta position. Yeah. And and is that what's called That's interesting. I've never gone skydiving, so I know very little about it. Although an internet this is just between me and you. Do not tell my wife because she would flip out. But I am planning on doing a skydiving jump possibly during c E S I am really yeah, me and uh I as actar of this Weekend Tech, are thinking about

doing some skydiving during CS team. Uh, I don't want to put into the into the show to the Las Vegas Convention Center, doubtful. Um, it'll be much further out into the desert. But don't tell my wife because she would flip out. Okay, pinky swear, Yeah, okay. So anyway, Yeah, he assumed that position and then that was the point where I I said, oh good, Well, then he's clearly he's clearly conscious and he's aware of what's going on

and he's able to respond. Um, he deployed his shoot at the appropriate time and uh that was a big that that got a big cheer from ground control. And did you see did you watch any of the video of his landing. It was a perfect landing. Absolutely, he it was like it was like he just stepped off a step. Like it wasn't like he just came from one thousand feet. It was like he had just walked

down a set of stairs. Yeah, I would have looked like a sack of potatoes from I would have been has been dragged at least another few hundred meters, Like he's an accomplished jumper. He's an accomplished base jumper, um, which is you know, jumping off of ironically enough, it's you know, lower altitudes, bridges and all sorts of other different physical features just you know. So he's he's this is well, you wouldn't try this at home anyway, but I mean, this is not something from that that an

inexperienced person did. He's uh, clearly a well accomplished jumper. And and he yeah, it was an absolutely perfect landing. And then he got as soon as he came to a stop, he went down on his knees and put his hands up in the air like that was pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah it was. I made the comment of if I had done that, I would have made the decision. I am never leaving the ground again from now on. People bring stuff to me. I I did my part, Like

I'm not going back over the ocean. You bring that continent right there. I want to go to London, bring London here. It was an absolutely amazing, amazing feat and it does have its uh, it does have a lot of importance. You might not necessarily believe that you might

think of it as simply some sort of stunt. Yeah, but going beyond that, I mean, there are first of all, this this kind of is a proof of concept of something that NASA was talking about in the sixties when they were thinking about if there were a problem with a spacecraft, would it be possible for astronauts to space dive back to Earth? Would it would there be any way they could do that? Um? Or is that just a you know, outside the realm of our our abilities?

And they theorized that it would be possible, but they were they were never able to test it. Kittinger's jumps were kind of related to that, and a lot of the data that they collected during this jump there was stuff that they could put toward developing more safety features for astronauts as well as space tourists, because whoever thought that would become a thing. But well, um and there I saw some some people talking about the space Shuttle program,

and of course the the the two famous disasters. UM. One of the people that has been working on this is um the husband of one of the people who perished in the Columbia accident. Um. They were too high to have done something like this, they were moving they were too far out from the planet when the the accident happened, and and they were moving way too fast, something like Mark seventeen. I think I remember, um reading it was a Dr Jonathan Clark, who was a former

NASA flight surgeon. His wife, Laurel Um died in that accident. So uh, you know, he was he was involved in the process of of going through the safety procedures here. Um. He's dedicated his life to working on safe, better safety in space. And um uh you know, as far as the Challenger incident, well, it's it's sort of unclear, um whether they would have been able to get out or not. Um. Of course, some of the the procedures they developed for the Space Shuttle were after that as a result of

that accident. So um. But you know, in the future or depending on on the different kinds of missions that are undertaken, you know, either by NASSA or another government space agency or by private enterprise. You know, I think that this information could prove useful, um, you know, in an emergency, or you know, perhaps it is a form

of space tourism. I don't know, well, And and and just learning learning what the effects are these the things that that that Felix experienced during this whole jump, I mean everything from most breaking the sound barrier that no one was really sure what would happen to a person, and if to be fair, as of the recording of this podcast, we cannot be certain that he did break

that barrier because the final numbers haven't come in. He had a did you see how he would know if he broke the sound barrier his so so he has a chess plate or he had a chess plate on his on a suit that contained a lot of different sensors, telemetry, you know, information, GPS, all this kind of stuff. If the sensors detected that the suit had exceeded the speed of sound, it would send a ringtone to his helmet.

But he said he was concentrating so hard on what was going on that he totally did not He didn't notice anything. So it may have gone off or it may not have gone off, and he would he doesn't know because he was you know, at that point, I'm kind of just really paying a trinch to what's going on, especially once you know he came out of that spin. So I'm flying here, Yeah, I got a lady I'm

flying here. Yeah, but yeah, there are there are a lot of There are a lot of things that this could help with, including designing new types of space suits that are effective and are not as you know, we can always make advances in that that realm. We don't want it to be so clunky that you can't maneuver around within the confines of a space vehicle. But it still has to have the adequate levels of protection necessary to make to maintain the health and safety of our astronauts.

So that's an important thing to to keep in mind too. Granted, I don't think I don't think most of our space suits will necessarily have a sponsor logos on them, but they will. Um. I was disappointed that the the the space suit didn't have wings. Well, it was interesting too to uh to compare and you know, I'm going in my head here looking at the the suits that they wore in uh NASA launches from the nineteen sixties and seventies,

more so much bulkier um than this. Well, I mean they were they were intended for different purposes, but I imagine the equipment in this newer suit was far more advanced than what kitten Ger wore. On his jumps and uh, you know that with the technology advances, Uh, you know, it's funny in a way, they resemble more what Hollywood um suggests for you know, space fighter pilots than from what the astronauts, the the actual astronauts from from our own planet um or back in the days when that

was so common. I look forward to to the day when we have space suits for space jumps that are like the ones in the documentary Star Trek, not the not the original motion picture Star Trek, but the the J. J. Abrams documentary Star Trek. Yeah, the J. J Abrams documentary Star Trek colon the lens flare caught me off. So, yeah, do you have anything else you want to talk about? This? This jump in particular, it was a really neat thing to watch live and and Twitter was going bonkers as

this was happening. I saw so many people I know tweeting about this, and um uh it just seemed like there was an overall sense of excitement and and not I was not the only terrified person on Earth watching this. Um And you can watch the entire presentation as well. It's it's up online so you can go and watch, or you can watch segments of it if you don't have, you know, two and a half hours to burn. But uh,

it's it's definitely something something amazing. It's one of those moments in human achievement where you think, wow, it never would have occurred to me that this is something that anyone would want to do, and if they wanted to do it, I can't eagine it being possible. And yet both of those things happened. Yep, it was. It was an amazing event. And uh, I'm glad it ended so well. Yes, steps you're perfect, Yep, yep, it was so many different

things could have gone wrong. I'm glad of a lot of really smart people worked on this to make sure it went off without without any major glitches. So my hat is off to you, and there we have our classic tech stuff episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. It was interesting to go back and look at this moment in history, which I think a lot of people kind

of forget about now. Things changed so fast. We have so many things dominating the news cycle that sometimes it can be hard to remember these sort of pivotal, exciting moments where the world was watching as someone did something truly extraordinary, so it's fun to go back and look

at this. If you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, you can reach out to me with the email tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, where you can pop on over to our website that's tech Stuff podcast ask dot com that has an archive of all of our past episodes. You can find links to where we are on social media, and you can also find a link to our online store, where every purchase you make goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it,

and I will talk to you again really soon. Ye hext Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from i heeart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.