Parachutist Michel Fournier ready to make 40km sonic boom freefall through the stratosphere

AFP via Babelfish translation ^ | August 21, 2003

[b4its2late]

10 to 1 he surrenders first.

[xrp]

Wouldn't this sorta...uhhh, kill him?

Plus, I don't know if I'd want a parachute deploying when I'm going several hundred miles per hour...

[.38sw]

Yikes. The highest altitude I ever jumped from was 13,000 feet, AGL, from a Beechcraft Queen Air. The O2 was a little thin up there, the sun was setting, and it was getting COLD. This was in Utah, where the elevation of the drop zone was 5,000 ft. No wonder I got to feeling a little light-headed before we jumped.

[Dark Knight]

IIRC didn't they even include that jump as part of a movie on test pilots or something?

DK

[HP8753]

My bet is that his NADS continue on at supersonic speed....at least for a while. ;-)

[Born Conservative]

How could ya not love Babelfish? Throw the cow over the fence some hay.

Babelfish was started by an Amish Software Company...

[Down South P.E.]

You beat me to it. At first I thought it's just late - must be me. After reading that incoherent, major run-on sentence several times I gave up and tried to read the rest of the article. My headache got worse.

[Wilhelm Tell]

This "great jump" one duration envisaged 6 minutes and 25 seconds must enable him to pulverize in same time four records of the world: those of the duration and the free falling speed, the altitude of jump in parachute and the altitude of human flight in balloon.

I hope the records are the only things that get pulverized.

[battousai]

Well he's trying to beat Col. Joseph Kittinger, who came close to supersonic speeds, 714 miles/hour, when he set the record for the fastest speed for man without an aircraft along with the record for the highest jump back in 1960. That was a jump from 102,000 feet ~ 31,000 meters.

more here about this great man:
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/eagles/kittnger.htm

We'll see what happens.

[battousai]

DOH! sorry didn't see you post before I posted the same link :)

[bethelgrad]

Try reading with a French accent. It becomes much more coherant once you someone speaking with an accent.

[hoot2]

"That's got to be altitude, not speed. 7000 meters per second is over 15,000 miles per hour. "

whats your point?
anything we can do; the french can do better...

viva le frog....

[altayann]

Here's a slightly better translation.

---

A Frenchman prepares to attempt to break the sound barrier in freefall

The French parachutist Michel Fournier is preparing to make a free fall of more than 40,000 metres above the great plains of Canada, with the intention of becoming the first man to break the sound barrier during freefall, his spokesperson indicated Thursday.

Eleven months after having had to put off attempts till 2003, due to bad weather conditions, this veteran army commander, 59 years old, has set up his headquarters on a balloon launch site in a remote corner of Saskatchewan, right in the middle of Canada.

"The jump will be occuring fairly soon", his spokesperson Diane de Robiano said over the telephone. "All the equipment is ready, they're just waiting for calm weather", which could occur later this weekend, she added.

To make this achievement a reality, Fournier counts on being able to ascend using a helium balloon to a height of 40 km above ground level, from which he will throw himself into the air, hoping to achieve in 20 seconds a speed of 1.5 km/h, thus breaking the sound barrier. At 1000 metres above the ground, he will open his parachute to land.

This "grand jump", calculated to last 6 minutes and 25 seconds, will allow him to break 4 world records at the same time: the longest freefall, the fastest freefall, the parachute jump from the highest altitude and the highest altitude achieved by a human being in a balloon.

The Frenchman, who's been preparing for nearly 15 years for this jump, wasn't lucky last year. The jump team had to interrupt its preparations three times due to the whims of the weather, without counting another time caused by a light technical incident.

They had to wait three weeks, right up until the meterological window for the jump closed on the 20th of September, skewering the project completely.

"He went into debt because of that, and it was a very big problem for him, but lots of people have helped him out financially", Ms de Robiano assured us.

They had hoped to be able to make up for this in May, another time that was propitious for the jump due to wind levels, but one of the team members suffered a cardiac event, setting back the attempt to the end of August or the beginning of September. To reduce the risks of the jump within the confines of the stratosphere, the parachutist plans to jump vertically so as to avoid as much as possible being knocked off course by the jet stream, which blows between an altitude of 7000 and 12000 metres.

[Ann Archy]

Wasn't this the same name as Tim McVeigh's buddy? Get fried Bozo.

[HAL9000]

Wasn't this the same name as Tim McVeigh's buddy? Get fried Bozo.

Heh - no, that was Fortier, not Fournier.

[RansomOttawa]

The French parachutist Michel Fournier is on the point of trying a jump of 40.000 meters above the large Canadian plains, with the ambition to become the first man to cross the wall of the sound in free fall, indicated Thursday its attached of press.

This guy's going to mess up our nice flat prairies with an ugly crater, isn't he?

[Consort]

[Down South P.E.]

No that didn't help - and I had French in High School - at the time that was the only foreign language offered - and we were required to take a foreign language.

[Shobutao]

I have doubts concerning the physics behind this freefall. Could somebody explain to me the apparent breaking of the laws of physics going on here. Terminal velocity is 134 miles/hr. How is is possible to break the sound barrier. Notice the following.

Terminal Velocity Examples
Falling object Mass Area Terminal velocity
Skydiver 75 kg 0.7 m^2 60 m/s 134 mi/hr
Baseball (3.66cm radius) 145 gm 42 cm^2 33 m/s 74 mi/hr
Golf ball (2.1 cm radius) 46 gm 14 cm^2 32 m/s 72 mi/hr
Hail stone (0.5 cm radius) .48 gm .79 cm^2 14 m/s 31 mi/hr
Raindrop (0.2 cm radius) .034 gm .13 cm^2 9 m/s 20 mi/hr


Data from Serway, Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Table 6.1. A drag coefficient C=0.5 is assumed, falling through air.

Is it due to the drag coefficient being a great deal less at the high elevation? Makes you wonder.

[asgardshill]

Eleven months after having had to be solved to defer to 2003 its tests, for lack of favorable weather conditions, this old ordering army, 59 years old, reinstalled since August 11 its headquarters on a site of launching of balloon, located in a lost corner of Saskatchewan, in full center of Canada.

I love Babelfish. More unintentional comedy there than any of Sheila Jackson-Lee's inane pronouncements.