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ELB wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

ELB wrote:1967 - Che Guevara forced to permanently retire from his career as a totalitarian thug.


On a more buoyant note:

2012 - Felix Baumgartner bunny-hopped out of the gondola of his balloon at 120,000 feet into supersonic freefall, then activated his parachute at 5000 feet, breaking the record for the highest jump and and becoming the first man to break the sound barrier without using an airplane...

Oh wait, that is still future, but with any luck, by the end of the day it will be true: http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

UPDATE: Still future history, the attempt was just cancelled for today due to gusty winds at the launch site. The balloon is fragile and needs winds less than 2 mph to launch. Bummer.

Here's the video. He did succeed, and he did cross Mach 1. He jumped from 128,000 feet and hit 834 M.P.H. Pretty amazing.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/spac ... -jump.html

They were saying on the news that he missed another record by 16 seconds for longest elapsed time free-fall. He had actually planned to break that record too, but his hightech suit/helmet/parachute getup had a fail-safe piece of software running which would cause a drogue chute to deploy if he became unstable and got too far out of control—which is exactly what happened. He was tumbling around too violently, and the drogue chute deployed—and that deployed his main chute. Another 16 seconds, and he would have made it. All the same, it will be a long time before anybody tops that feat. I just can't get over the 834 MPH. Baumgartner said that he had no sensation that he was going that fast, and he said that if he made a sonic boom, he didn't hear it because the wind noise in his helmet was terrific.

ELB wrote:1967 - Che Guevara forced to permanently retire from his career as a totalitarian thug.


On a more buoyant note:

2012 - Felix Baumgartner bunny-hopped out of the gondola of his balloon at 120,000 feet into supersonic freefall, then activated his parachute at 5000 feet, breaking the record for the highest jump and and becoming the first man to break the sound barrier without using an airplane...

Oh wait, that is still future, but with any luck, by the end of the day it will be true: http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

UPDATE: Still future history, the attempt was just cancelled for today due to gusty winds at the launch site. The balloon is fragile and needs winds less than 2 mph to launch. Bummer.

Here's the video. He did succeed, and he did cross Mach 1. He jumped from 128,000 feet and hit 834 M.P.H. Pretty amazing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/spac ... -jump.html