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Free-falling Austrian tests sound barrier

: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Agencies via Shanghai Daily, October 15, 2012

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An Austrian daredevil lifted off yesterday in hopes of making his delayed skydive from a balloon flying 37 kilometers above the planet and breaking the sound barrier.

Felix Baumgartner,an Austrian daredevil lifts off yesterday in hopes of making his delayed skydive from a balloon flying 37 kilometers above the planet and breaking the sound barrier.

Cheers broke out as the craft took flight at 9:30am. The enormous balloon rose, then pulled into the air a capsule containing Felix Baumgartner, 43. His mother wept as she watched the launch, which had been scrapped several times during the previous week by high winds.

Baumgartner's ascent into the stratosphere should take 2.5 to three hours. The descent should last just 15 to 20 minutes, more than half of it beneath the relative safety of his parachute's canopy.

The 850,000-cubic-meter plastic balloon is about one-tenth the thickness of a Ziploc bag, or roughly as thin as a dry cleaner bag.

Baumgartner aims to break a 52-year-old high altitude parachute jump record held by project adviser Joe Kittinger. In 1960, Kittinger, now a retired US Air Force colonel, jumped from a balloon flying at 31,333 meters and fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds before opening his parachute. Baumgartner hopes to top that with a jump from 37 kilometers and freefall for 5 minutes and 35 seconds.

Supersonic for a minute

There is so little air in the upper reaches of the atmosphere that after about 30 seconds of freefall, Baumgartner should be moving faster than the speed of sound, which is roughly 1,110 kph at that altitude.

Among the risks Baumgartner faces is the chance that his supersonic body will trigger shock waves that could collide with the force of an explosion. But Baumgartner's medical team doesn't believe this situation is very likely because the air in the stratosphere would be too thin to carry the waves.

Baumgartner would stay supersonic for about a minute before hitting a thicker part of the atmosphere, slowing his fall. Temperatures are expected to be as low as about minus-57 degrees Celsius. The near-vacuum puts him at risk of ebullism, a potentially lethal condition in which fluids in the body turn to gas - literally blood boiling. Severe lung damage could occur within minutes.

Sponsor Red Bull plans to broadcast the entire jump live on its website, but has built in a 20-second delay in the feed in case there is an accident.

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