Posted on 08/27/2003 2:15:30 PM PDT by HAL9000
SASKATOON -- A French parachutist and his international team watched in disbelief Monday morning as the helium-filled balloon designed to carry the man to record-breaking heights burst during its launch at the North Battleford municipal airport.
"It was over in seconds. The balloon was launched and all of a sudden it cracked open and the helium went out," said Claude-Jean Harel, the volunteer Canadian co-ordinator of Michel Fournier's Super Jump.
"People had tears in their eyes. People worked really hard. It's very intense so when you have something like this happen, it's a shock."
Fifty-nine-year-old Fournier, a former French army reserve colonel, had hoped to ascend 40 kilometres above the earth in a pressurized gondola that looks like a man-sized thermos and attaches to the balloon. He then planned to skydive out of the gondola and set several world records: highest altitude for a human balloon flight; highest freefall altitude; fastest freefall speed (mach 1.5 or 1,500 km/h); and longest freefall (six minutes, 25 seconds).
In addition to setting records, Fournier had hoped to collect scientific data that would help researchers better understand how the body reacts to extreme conditions.
He wore an anti-gravity suit designed to protect his blood circulation and to shield his body from three minutes of -60 C temperatures while falling fast enough to break the sound barrier.
Harel says the 50 to 60 team members from France, Brazil, England, Spain and Canada were up throughout the night Sunday and into Monday morning preparing for the jump.
"It is very labour-intensive and time-consuming. You have different teams that do different things. You have a team that looks after Michel, dressing him up and putting his suit on. It takes a hour and a half to put his suit on and the various electronic components and probes that he carries on himself to monitor his heart rate, his temperature. It takes all night to lay the balloon on the ground in a position that is adequate for filling it up and launching it," said Harel.
The 25-storey-tall helium-filled balloon was designed by a British company that specializes in manufacturing large balloons. This one was the largest they had ever made.
© Copyright 2003 The Leader-Post (Regina)
They must have been French too.
Seems to me that if you wish to use the force of gravity pull you to earth that fast, you wouldn't want an ANTI-Gravity suit. One suspects they meant a G-Suit.
Another question, besides the extreme cold at altutude, wouldn't the friction created at mach speeds be a little on the toasty side, and wouldn't you want a suit made to withstand that?
Those wacky French.
Not eeny-mohr.
Watch that first step!
For a minute there I was thinking they borrowed the anti-gravs from the Star Trek set.
Simple explanation:
Your relative airspeed never exceeds free fall velocity. You may be heading down at mach 1.5 but you've only got a relative airspeed on your body of about 125 mph.
The reason the spacecraft heat up is because they are going 17,000+ mph when they hit the air molecules. Their relative airspeed is way up there into the thousands of miles per hour.
When you jump out of a balloon, you are starting out at zero mph and as soon as you hit a relative airspeed of 120-140 mph, you stop accelerating.
I'm sure somebody will come in here and give you the college level explanation and correct my mistakes.
I remember seeing a documentary a few years back about the world's record parachute jump. I don't remember the guy's name, but I assume it was Mr. Kittinger, mentioned above. The jump was conceived and supervised by NASA. They wanted to see if it was possible for an astronaut to survive, if he had to make an emergency jump out of a space capsule from an extreme height. The jump (from about 20 miles high!) was successful.
Good observation. One of the problems with exceeding the speed of sound in the instability experienced as the sound barrier is passed. A human dressed in an anti-gravity suit doesn't seem like a very stable configuration for the attempt.I'd say this guy just dodged his own death.
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