TechStuff Jumps From Space

senior writer Jonathan Strickland. He there, well, today, Chris, I thought we would talk about something that happened recently in the news, especially at the time that we're recording this, since it is currently a mid October ish twelve, two thousand twelve, and uh and 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 and 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 record. And he said, and 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 attempt to break some world records, and many world records were broken. Actually three for 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 free fall, 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 his name pronounced Kittinger on the news report that I okay, I don't know that er 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, nineteen sixty two, the Eugene Andreev jumped from an altitude of around eighty three thousand, five twenty three ft, which is around twenty four hundred fifty seven meters uh over Russia, and um he fell for eighty thousand, three eighty feet or thousand, five hundred meters before deploying his shoot without

using a drug shoot. So depending on the way you look at his is the longest free fall because there was no drug shoot deployed anyway. Uh, baum Gartner's fall 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, uh and deploying a 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 pressure rised 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're 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 thousand seven. See I did this all the way around. It's about three and a half pounds per square inch. So remember it at sea level fifteen

pounds thou feet around three and a half pounds. That, by the way, is a point to five kilograms 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 about 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 thousands, 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, we took

about two hours frohim 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 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, uh 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 gonna 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 de pressurize 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 um, you have the emergency exit,

the emergency exit. If you were 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 that 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 Kitteninger 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 H due to the H 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, 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, now if somebody's just now hearing about this, yeah, well then you have been hiding in a hole. You can you can watch actually watched this live when it happened, and uh, from about an hour into it. I turned it on after we've 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 here 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 U 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 actually warmed up a little bit from um I forget no, 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 and 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 cows. Yeah, methane production, is that what you're talking about? Okay, I was trying to see where you're going there, 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 the 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

decos and things, right. Yeah. It also had it also had a sun visor that that Felix could put down or up if he needed to. H and the the visor itself was heated in order to have it, uh 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 it could be 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 is 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, right, 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 aboarding 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 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, it's it definitely 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 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 for some 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. I'm not 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 five hundred ft long or one point six meters now at the height once it was inflated, and which takes about an hour. Takes aboun hour to inflate this balloon with helium. They used helium because it's a non flammable very important if you've been wondering why there's a helium shortage. Yeah yeah, talk about that's a big balloon. That's a big balloon can fill up with helium. Yeah yeah. The Yellow 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 get the door. A 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 room 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 you just wanted to say, smell 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 those other balloons It didn't It didn't

vent anger invented helium. Yeah. Now, 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 out of 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 long as they didn't run into any wire coat hangers, because that seems to be the downfall of most dry cleaner bags. Yeah, that's exactly the problem. Uh Yeah, they and they also had some pretty some other pretty cool equipment involved in this. 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 stabilization gyroscope to track

Felix's movements. And they had ground cameras on these huge trucks with these uh these enormous um basis that were motorized, so they could track the progress of the balloon. And 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 have that reflectively smaller, although not that much smaller. It's the six foot 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 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 stream it out live.

And in fact, they had three dedicated DEO 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, you know, 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 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 it would not go well. So there was that there was the whole depressurization, 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. At that point he was he had to stand on a 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 you, because there is atmosphere out there, it's just not as much it's in the stratosphere at

this point. And in case you're wondering, I happen 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, curvature of the Earth, and you're going, okay, that's That's something else that's kind of interesting is that the 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 time. 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 um, that's another interesting point than the interview with the scientist that I had watched said that, Um, 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 and you know, it will travel at different race

speed from sea level two feet. Uh, it'll 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 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. Yeah, 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 vacuum, So you should go with the dice. And that's the um. But yeah, he uh. It's funny because when you get the idea of somebody jumping out of an airplane, you're doing a traditional skydive. Um. 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 shoes. Then you pull it and go. Well, Felix wasn't as graceful, but it wasn't his fault. He 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 skydivers 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 the somersaults and other kinds of 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 can see him spinning

around and around. You're like, okay, I sure hope he's able to maintain consciousness not black out because uh, Kittenger said, you know, he blacked out during his fall because of us 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 the Kinder did where he blacked out, and so that's why the drug 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 POSITIONE. And and is that what's called? That's interesting. I've never gone skydiving, so I know very little about it. Although and 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 CE. Are not. I am really Yeah, me and uh I as actar of this Weekend Tech, are thinking about doing some skydiving during CS. Uh. Don't into 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 Okay. So anyway, yeah, he assumed that position, and then that was the point where I was 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 uh 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. He it was like it was like he just stepped off a step. Yeah, 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 a would beg I would have been dragged at least another few hundred meters.

He's an accomplished jumper. He's 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, yeah, it was. I had made the comment of if I had done that, I would have made the decision I am never leaving the ground to end. 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, I want to go to London. Bring

London here. That was. 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. Kitten or jumps were kind of related to that, and a lot

of the data that they collected during this jomp. 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 now you know, 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 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 UM 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 as 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 experience during this whole jump, I mean everything from breaking the sound barrier that no one was really sure what would happen to a person. And in fact, 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 attention 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 appointed that the the the space suit didn't have wings. Well it was interesting too to uh to compare and 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 and 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. They in a way, they resemble more what Hollywood um suggest 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. The J. J. Abrams documentary Star Trek colon the lens flare. 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 imagine 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, 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 uh, all of the team that was responsible for this is pretty phenomenal. So Felix, go put up your feet relax um, you know, maybe maybe slow down a little bit for a while. You know you stopping smell the roses, don't and not a thousand deep. Keep your

feet on the ground and keep reaching for the start. Right. So, guys, if you have any subjects you think we should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, I highly recommend you get in touch with us and let us know, because otherwise how would we find out. One way you can let us know is by sending us an email that address this tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or you can always let us know on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled.

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