Anyone Following The Sky Dive?

[Arch]

If you'd watched more of the ascent, you'd have seen the temperature dropping to -60ish and then start rising again! The commentator made reference to it. It surprised me - I thought it would just get colder and colder, the higher the balloon went.

This article explains the phenomenon.

I saw bits of the ascent, so I saw the temp changes. I just didn't want to leave it running and run out of broadband at a critical moment!

Would be interesting to know whether someone could survive without heating - I mean if the pockets of very very cold were high enough, would he fall through so quickly it wouldn't kill him? Or if lower, where there was some air, would the air friction provide any heat?

(Of course, he has to have the pressure suit, or his blood boils anyway).

 

[ColinJ]

Would be interesting to know whether someone could survive without heating - I mean if the pockets of very very cold were high enough, would he fall through so quickly it wouldn't kill him? Or if lower, where there was some air, would the air friction provide any heat?

The wind chill cycling down my local hills at 50 mph is bad enough; I dread to think what an 800+ mph wind chill would be like! (I don't reckon that the wind resistance would have a significant heating effect at those speeds.)

 

[Arch]

The wind chill cycling down my local hills at 50 mph is bad enough; I dread to think what an 800+ mph wind chill would be like! (I don't reckon that the wind resistance would have a significant heating effect at those speeds.)

No, I guess not!

 

[subaqua]

The wind chill cycling down my local hills at 50 mph is bad enough; I dread to think what an 800+ mph wind chill would be like! (I don't reckon that the wind resistance would have a significant heating effect at those speeds.)

takes it down to about -140 Deg C thats enough for a geordie to think about a coat. but not wear it

 

[ComedyPilot]

The 800mph was because the air was so thin, and little or no resistence, so there'd be virtually no wind chill.

 

[ColinJ]

The 800mph was because the air was so thin, and little or no resistence, so there'd be virtually no wind chill.

I agree that lack of resistance was why he went so fast.

I'm not so sure about the wind chill though ... There isn't a lot of air there, so it wouldn't take a lot of heat from the body to warm it to body temperature, but he was moving so fast that there would almost instantly be more cold air to replace it!

 

[ComedyPilot]

Besides, isn't wind chill due to water evaporating from the skin?

Well due to the lack of water vapor that high, isn't that why there was no wind chill?

And the chill and visor freezing up only came in lower where the water vapour and air humidity increased?

 

[Davehateshills]

Felix is clearly one of us!

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Felix is clearly one of us!

Only if the bike had its own parachute!

 

[ComedyPilot]

Felix is clearly one of us!

Nah..........his chain's slack

 

[classic33]

Planned Or coincidence!
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chuck-yeager-breaks-sound-barrier-article-1.1183654

 

[gbb]

Apologies if someones already asked this, i was listening to 5live when they were talking about it..one guy asked....he's so high, there's so much land visible below him.....how did he know where he was going to land.
There's virtually a whole continent visible below him fer chrissakes

 

[Arch]

There was little wind, so I gather the balloon didn't travel too far from above launchpoint (well, in continental terms anyway). And once he jumped, he dropped pretty much straight down until the 'chute opened, at which stage he could steer a little - he was asking which way the wind was blowing as he cam down. There was a long escarpment visible from a long way up, which was a feature he'd recognise.

There were many helicopters up there tracking him on the way down, hence there were people there moments after he landed.

 

[ColinJ]

Besides, isn't wind chill due to water evaporating from the skin?

Wind chill is due to fast moving air (or moving fast through the air) removing heat from the body more quickly than still air would.

Evaporating sweat just makes the process more effective. Water has some very interesting properties, one of which is that it takes a lot of energy to turn it from a liquid into a vapour. When sweat evaporates, it sucks heat out of the body to do so. If I remember my schoolboy physics classes properly, that is called the latent heat of evaporation - yes - link! If you look at the numbers in that table, they are much bigger for water than for anything else.

Well due to the lack of water vapor that high, isn't that why there was no wind chill?

A lack of water vapour in the air makes the process work better. That's why sweating in a dry climate works so well. When you sweat in humid conditions, the sweat doesn't evaporate properly. It sticks to you or just drips off you so you don't get cooled properly and are very uncomfortable.

The reason he didn't get chilled to death wasn't due to a lack of wind chill, it was due to the presence of a space suit!

And the chill and visor freezing up only came in lower where the water vapour and air humidity increased?

Was the frost outside, or inside the visor? I wouldn't be surprised if it was his breath freezing inside.

Air temperature rises and falls with altitude, as I mentioned in an earlier post. The visor probably froze when he got to the really cold band of atmosphere at -60-odd degrees.

 

[ComedyPilot]

He pretty much knew where he was most of the time (30-50 miles east of Roswell) The skydive would have been almost vertical give or take a mile or so, and the last 5-7000 feet would have been easy to see where he was in relation to any roads etc. Bear in mind he was in freefall for about 3 minutes in a stable spread position, so plenty of time to look around (see where Rowell was). He will have done quite a few jumps in the area to get used to the DZ and the surrounding countryside.