Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 20:56:22 -0500 someone wrote > What is the record for the highest skydives? Military and civilian? > Someone recently asked me if it was possible to skydive from 40000 or > 50000 feet. The highest that I have heard of were SEALS making HALO jumps > from 37000. Does anyone out there know? eyeater@pbs.org (Eric Yeater) sent in info (this is the revised version)
Col. Joseph Kittinger jumped from a balloon at around 102,000 feet. He wore a pressure suit, used a 6-foot stabilizing drougue chute, and exceeded the speed of sound on the way down. And yes, he's still alive. Freefall time was around 4 1/2 minutes, and his (round) main was activated around 18K
Thanks for your indulgence. Corrected data are from "PARACHUTING: The Skydiver's Handbook" by Dan Poynter
Eric Yeater B-18395 ====== for tons of information on Kittinger and his jumps, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger (which has links to references for substantiation) ======= Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps (corrected) From: tdasher@dasher.com Date: 16 Nov 1995 14:40:08 GMT
What most people don't know is that this was the third and final of a series of jumps from increasing altitude. The first one almost killed him. Deployment was actually three stage, not two stage and the small drogue was supposed to deploy shortly after exit to be followed by the larger 6 ft drogue and finally the main. All of these events were to be triggered by a timer which Cap. Kittinger was to activate just prior to exit. Unfortunately he bumped something during his preparations for exit and activated the timer well prior to exit without knowing it.
Simulataneously with his exit, the first drogue deployed and wrapped his ankle. He struggled with first this and then the main drogue came out as well. The spin caused by this arrangement was fast enough to cause him to black out. The timer next deployed the main which of course did not help in any way.
Finally, the AAD on the reserve fired but the bridle wrapped the mess of the main and drogues. The designers of this rig were pretty sharp though and had designed the reserve pilot chute bridle to be weak enough to break under a high speed descent. This worked and he had a good reserve, all prior to his regaining consciousness. I guess the breakable bridle on the round reserve was the precursor to the freebag for squares.
By the way, this info and lot's more good stuff(like the guy who died trying to break Kittinger's record, his intended altitude was about 118000 ft) is in a book called 'The Sky People' by Peter Hearn. He's ex-British military and did an excellent job of researching the history of parachuting. It's actually a very entertaining read.
Some of the stories about early parachutists are great fun. I think my favorite is one particular British pilot who either had the best or the worst luck in the world depending on how you look at it. He and a student pilot were unable to find their airfield due to fog and were low on fuel. Solution: Have the ground fire flares through the cloud to help you find the airport. Problem: One of the flares almost hits his airplane, he flinches and the plane goes into a spin and recovers only about 100 ft above the ground. Obviously this isn't working.
Solution #2: Climb to 4000 ft, have student jump and then follow him.
Problem #2: Aircraft makes a 180, comes back at him and then misses by less than 50 ft. Wow, it can't get worse than this.
Wrong!!! Just prior to landing this poor guy is almost blinded by a flash of blue light above him. He managed to fall through a cluster of five high tension wires without touching them, but then his canopy and lines snagged them in such a way as to bring them all together in a dramatic way. He shorted them out well enough that the better part of Northamptonshire was blacked out.
The amazing thing is that after all of this he didn't get a scratch but did get a great story.
Ted Dasher, Jr. D-12731, S/L JM/I, Senior Rigger, Strong Tandem ======= Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps From: Matt Bostick ...@CompuServe.COM> Date: 15 Nov 1995 04:47:40 GMT We regularly make training jumps from 30 to 35,000. I have seen higher. Cpl. Matt Bostick ====== Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps From: mark@vtci.com (Mark Smith) Date: 15 Nov 1995 15:15:01 GMT Mark Drapkin (neon@earthlink.net) wrote: : 118,000 feet? My Goodness, what kind of balloon did he use : to get to THAT altitude?!?!
NOT a hot-air balloon! A gas balloon. As a matter of fact, at the time of kittinger's research, that was the ONLY way to get that high. The air force was expecting aircraft to be able to get that high in the future so they were doing bailout research. His full pressure suit design was the pre-runner of space-suits.
There's this great picture in this book I have of him just after he left his capsule. You can clearly see the curve of the earth in the backdrop of black space and a guy in FF in a space suit. Pretty cool.
Oh, BTW, the speed of sound is relative. As one person mentioned, he was actually travelling faster than the speed of sound, but that is to say the speed of sound as measured at sea level.
--
Virtual Mark Smith mark@vtci.com USPA D-13761
Technologies 703-264-7456 FAX: 264-5005 AFF JM '95
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Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps
From: church@art.ohiou.edu (Bob Church)
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 16:51:43 GMT
The gondola is at the Airforce Museum in Dayton, Ohio. It has "this is the highest step in the world" painted just below the bottom of the door.
The speed of sound varies with air temperature. At 60 degrees F, it's about 760 mph. At -80F, the average temperature at 65,000, it's 650. As I remember it, he broke the sound barrier, which was somewhere in the 480mph range at +100,000, but because the air was so thin he didn't even notice. The radar operators told him afterwards.
And now, back to the old debate...."it was the highest jump, but was it the highest skydive?"
Bob Church ====== Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps From: rmehler@netcom.com (R. Mehler) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 23:40:08 GMT Bob Church (church@art.ohiou.edu) wrote: : > As far as the drougue fall not being freefall, I can only quote Bill : > Booth who said: "When they start landing 'em, I'll stop logging 'em." : At "normal" altitudes this pretty much sums it up. However, one of the : biggest dangers of extremely high altitude jumps is an uncontrolled : spin. The drogue eliminates that danger. That's why some people : question this jump as a freefall.
Just to beat this to death and pick the last nit, didn't he hand deploy the drogue after jumping? If so, then it certainly was a freefall jump, though the amount of freefall time could still be debatable.
RM ======= Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps From: darkman01@aol.com (Darkman01) Date: 17 Nov 1995 07:42:59 -0500 In article eyeater-1511951701000001@pbs15898.pbs.org, eyeater@pbs.org (Eric Yeater) writes: >in an enclosed capsule suspended beneath the balloon. There's a nifty >photo of his exit (WAY above the clouds) in Dan Poynter's book, >"Parachuting: A Skydiver's Manual" (or was it, "Skydiving: A Parachutist's >Manual"?)
Yep, neat photo, too. And if memory serves, he was at 102,216 or some crazy altitude. I don't remember the hundreds of feet, but I seem to recall 102,000 as being the big part. My wifes cousin runs a banner towning outfit in Florida and he knows Col Kittinger really well. At a family reunion recently he was telling me some of the stories. Kittinger also published a book "The Long Lonely Leap" I think it was called. Intersting stories of him and others who did some really serious high altitude ballooning and also parachuting. Even under the drogue, I think he as exceeding 600 mph. BTW, as I remember from the book, it was a ballute (spelling?), a combo parachute/balloon type device which kept him stable (except when he got the bridle around his neck once..)
Do you think someone could possibly do a two way from that high?
Darin A-21774 ====== Subject: Re: Highest recorded jumps: Here is an attempt at the proof From: Earl Needham Date: 21 Nov 1995 23:30:46 GMT At 11:56 AM 11/21/95 GMT, Michael wrote: > > >I am really concerned with the number of responses to "Highest recorded >jumps" that are commenting on reaching the speed of sound (they are >saying anywhere from 400 to 800 miles per hour). If the following >assumptions and calculations that I have derived from physics books are >incorrect please let me know and I apologize. But I do not believe that >they are. I prefer to bet on Sir Isaac Newton's formulas. > >In high speed motion through air, the resisting force is approximately >proportional to (v squared) rather than to v; it is then called air drag >or simply drag. Falling raindrops, airplanes, and cars moving at high >speed all experience air drag. In this case; > >f =3D kv is replaced by f =3D K(v squared). Therefore we can show that >terminal speed is given by: v(terminal) =3D the square root of (mg/K) >and that the units of the constant (K) are: N=80(s-squared)/(m-squared), >or kg/m. > >Example: > >For a human body falling through the air, the numerical value of the >constant K in v(terminal) =3D the square root of (mg/K), is found to be >about 0.25 kg/m . If an 80 kg skydiver (approximately 175 lbs) >jumps out of an airplane and reaches terminal velocity before he opens >his parachute, the terminal velocity is =3D v(terminal) =3D the square root >of ((80 kg)(9.8 m/(s-squared)))/(0.25 kg/m) which =3D 56 m/s, and (9.8 >m/(s-squared)) is being generous since it will tend to be a little >lower at higher altitudes. > >So here we have 56 m/s =3D about 125 miles per hour. > >How does everyone out there figure that this guy hit 480 mph let alone >760. > >Please feel free to let me know if I have left something out that makes >these calculations incorrect.
Very simply and gently put, you left out the effect on TRUE AIRSPEED of thinner air at higher altitudes, in this case an EXTREMELY high altitude. Your assumption that a skydiver will fall at approx. 125 MPH is correct -- if you are considering *INDICATED* airspeed. Easily seen by the difference in true airspeed and indicated air speed for airplanes cruising at 1000 feet and airplanes cruising at 30,000 feet.. As altitude increases, true airspeed increases in relation to indicated air speed. At the same time, temperature is decreasing and Mach decreases as well. Examples:
125 mph INDICATED airspeed at 1000 feet and 13.9 degrees C = 127 mph TRUE airspeed and Mach 0.19.
125 mph INDICATED airspeed at 30,000 feet and -44.8 degrees C= 202 mph TRUE airspeed and Mach 0.34.
125 mph INDICATED airspeed at 50,000 feet and -56.7 degrees C=310 mph TRUE airspeed and Mach 0.54.
125 mph INDICATED airspeed at 100,000 feet and -56.7 degrees C=833 mph TRUE airspeed and Mach 1.45.
These calculations were performed on an ASA CX-1 Pathfinder Flight Computer. The temperatures were given to me as "standard temperature aloft" by the Weather Ops Office at Cannon AFB, NM.
You mean you've jumped...ROUNDS??!! (Overheard at the Clovis, NM DZ) (Of course, silly! Hasn't everyone?)
Member Bonus Days Club since 1980 Earl Needham, Clovis, NM =====further counterarguments
You are assuming a constant K with altitude. Without arguing whether or not it is. Without showing cause for such an assumption, you are leaving a big hole in your argument.
Aerodynamicists would use the equation Drag = Cd x q x A
Where:
Cd = coefficient of drag q = dynamic pressure A = reference area.
You took Cd, A and the density of air and piled them into K and broke out the V squared of q as the independent variable. Then you jumped to the assumption that this K term was constant with altitude even though you can clearly see that it contains the density of air will vary with altitude. It is also not certian that a human body will have a Cd constant with altitude. There is so much turbulence around the body that you can make an easy argument that boundary seperation will occur in radically different points at different altitude creating significant variation in Cd with altitude.....
Hey where did everyone go???? Rhonda, bill, Barry???
Kevin O'Connell
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Subject: Re: Highest recorded jumps: Here is an attempt at the proof that a
175 lb free falling body will not exceed 125 miles per hour.
From: Kane Franklin
Date: 21 Nov 1995 19:15:27 GMT
You dolt. Any freefalling body (human in this case) will obey the laws of physics. In your case, you forgot to study the physics of aerodynamics. The motion of a simple (Newtonian) flow is characterized by two dimensionless parameters, the Reynolds (Re) number and the Mach (M) number. Now I don't have time to cover it in much detail, but for this problem, as you transition from the incompressible flow regime (below Mach 0.3) to the compressible flow regime (from Mach 0.3 up to Mach 8), you have to change the way you calculate drag. You move from classical fluid mechanics and into random flow phase variance. But to simplify and approximate for this exercise; the drag experienced by a freefalling body is related not only to the human body's mass weight and velocity through the atmosphere, but also to atmospheric density, (atmospheric pressure), and the aerodynamic profile of the body (which strongly determines flowfield boundaries and profiles). Atmospheric density varies exponentially with altitude. We'll ignore temperature for now. I'm running out of time....Suffice it to say, humans can theoretically go about Mach 1, maybe a little more, in freefall with the right body position. J. Kittinger probably came very close to going Mach 1, and he was trying to slow down for most of the dive! A really good "no-lift"-head-down-balls-out-pointed-toes-needle-dive-for-hell would have netted Joe the freefall Mach barrier for sure! Go read about aerodynamics, kid.
See ya. Blue Skies. -KSF ====== Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps From: drolfe@eng (David Rolfe) Date: 21 Nov 1995 18:36:58 GMT In article 7ph@realm.net, BASE194@realm.net writes: > > The good Mr. Kittinger was a hero to me and many until he got old and > cranky. > > A high profile BASE jump took place near his home town some years ago > and a newspaper reporter tracked him down for his comments, and right there on TV, > my hero, the guy who pushed the parachuting envelope higher than anyone said of > the folks pushing the parachuting envelope lower, "They're all crazy fools. And they will > kill themselves one by one." (Or words to that effect.) > > Mr. Kittinger has is the record for the longest (or highest) drogue fall. > > A dead person can drogue fall. > > What's he done lately? >
Kittinger repeatedly risked his life so that the the US could gain vital information on what it takes to survive on the edge of space. What he did was far more than 'drogue fall'. At the time people only had the vaguest idea of conditions at 100K ft. What they did know from earlier jumps was that anyone attempting unrestrained freefall at that altitude would get into an uncontrolled spin, black out, and die. This was in an era when passing a baton in freefall was front page news in skydiving terms. Even if Kittinger *did* have the skills and ability to remain stable at 400kts in a vacuum while wearing 200lbs of equipment one of the objectives was to test the parachute equipment that would be issued to crews of high altitude recon aircraft, who would have no previous skydiving experience.
What happened on one of the earlier balloon ascents illustrates the nature of Kittinger's commitment. The plan was to ascend above 90,000ft in a pressurized capsule the size of a telephone booth. As the inflation of the once-only balloon started Kittinger accidently opened his 4-pin round main, which was the only means of escape if the balloon tore open during the ascent, which was a commmon event. Rather than scratch the mission, which would have killed the project, Kittinger successfully repacked a 28ft round while standing in a area the size of a telephone booth and wearing a spacesuit. He did this without the ground crew finding out, with no prior packing experience and without a pullup cord.
On the ascent to his highest jump Kittinger noticed that the pressurization of one of his gloves had failed. Despite considerable pain, the fact that it had swollen to twice its normal size, and that the hand in question was incapable of pulling handles he chose to continue the ascent until the balloon stopped climbing.
If Kittinger had done what he done in wartime he would have have received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
It strikes me as shallow and asine for you to criticise him for expressing views which are held by 95% of the population, including a fair number of skydivers.
In exchange for his saying that BASE jumping is dangerous you choose to question his honor, his ability and his contribution to the sport.
I invite you to reconsider your words.
David Rolfe, C262 (Ireland), San Franisco. ====== Subject: Re: highest recorded jumps From: gkenn19897@aol.com (GKenn19897) Date: 24 Nov 1995 00:35:41 -0500
The incident mentioned regarding the parachute coming open in the capsule happened to Cliff McClure, on Manhigh III. Joe Kittinger flew Manhigh I, in June 1957. What happened to Kittinger was that someone installed the oxygen valve backwards so O2 was being dumped overboard instead of into the capsule. After reaching altitude, which was about 96,000 feet, Kittinger reported his oxygen tank was half empty. It should have been enough to last him 48 hours. When he landed (in a creek, by the way -- the first "splashdown") his oxygen tank was empty. Still a harrowing experience.
Greg Kennedy C25431