Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I Heeart Radio and a love
Speaker 1: of all things tech. It's time for another classic episode.
Speaker 1: This one's truly dated. This one came out on November seven,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. It is titled tech Stuff Jumps from
Speaker 1: Space and Yes, this was when we were talking about
Speaker 1: a space jump when a capsule that was raised up
Speaker 1: by very strong balloons, uh, was taken to the very
Speaker 1: edge of space and we got to experience what it
Speaker 1: was like to jump out of it as we watched
Speaker 1: in first person view, and it was absolutely exhilarating or terrifying,
Speaker 1: depending on your point of view. In this episode, Chris
Speaker 1: and I talked about that entire mission and what it
Speaker 1: took to achieve eve it. I hope you guys enjoy.
Speaker 1: Earlier this week, as of the time we're recording this,
Speaker 1: a fellow named Felix baumb Gardner did something pretty phenomenal. Yes,
Speaker 1: actually he fell nice, He fell a lot. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: fell more than any man has ever fallen before, right
Speaker 1: in space. No one can hear you fall. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, Uh, you know, you said that it's
Speaker 1: been in the news. I think this is going to
Speaker 1: captivate people's attention for a long long time because I
Speaker 1: don't know that anybody is ready to better this brand
Speaker 1: new And he said, and this record was set more
Speaker 1: than you know, forty years after the last one, so
Speaker 1: uh so, yeah, it's been a while. So what what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is the Red Bull Stratos jump sponsored
Speaker 1: by Red Bull. Was this crazy the attempt to break
Speaker 1: some world records and many world records were broken, actually
Speaker 1: three three, you know, the four that they were aiming
Speaker 1: for they broke. If you're curious about the one they
Speaker 1: did not break, it was for longest freefall. Uh And
Speaker 1: I think they were going by longest as in uh time,
Speaker 1: really they were looking at the time. It's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting because according to what they were they were going
Speaker 1: by the person who had the the record for the
Speaker 1: highest jump previously, which was a uh that Air Force
Speaker 1: United States Air Force colonel named Joseph Kittinger and his
Speaker 1: name pronounced Kittinger. And on the news report that I, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know that Kittinger um at any rate he
Speaker 1: in in. Uh. He did several jumps for the Air
Speaker 1: Force to kind of test what this, how how could
Speaker 1: a human survive in a high altitude jump? And one
Speaker 1: on one of those jumps he fell for four minutes
Speaker 1: and thirty six seconds before deploying his main shoot. However, Uh,
Speaker 1: he did use a drogue shoot, which is a smaller
Speaker 1: shoot not meant to uh, to slow you to the
Speaker 1: safe speed, but rather to help guide your descent because
Speaker 1: well we'll get into why that's important. But he had
Speaker 1: that deployed in his jump. However, Uh, if you're really
Speaker 1: going to be a stickler, then uh two years later.
Speaker 1: That was in nineteen sixty two years later. So nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, Eugene Andreev jumped from an altitude of around
Speaker 1: eighty three thousand, five hundred twenty three feet, which is
Speaker 1: around twenty five thousand, four hundred fifty seven meters uh
Speaker 1: over Russia, and um he fell for eighty thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred eighty feet or four thousand, five hundred meters before
Speaker 1: deploying his shoot without using a drugue shoot. So, depending
Speaker 1: on the way you look, get his is the longest
Speaker 1: free fault because there was no drug shoot deployed anyway,
Speaker 1: uh baumb Gardner's fault did not last that long before
Speaker 1: deploying his shoot. It was four minutes twenty two seconds
Speaker 1: if I recall correctly, So he did not break that record. However,
Speaker 1: other records he definitely did break. And it was a
Speaker 1: remarkable achievement on multiple fronts. I mean, just human endurance
Speaker 1: to be able to handle that kind of uh battering
Speaker 1: about you get in a jump of that size, as
Speaker 1: well as the technical uh achievements that we made in
Speaker 1: order to make this possible. So we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about why this is such a challenging
Speaker 1: thing to take on and the kind of stuff he
Speaker 1: used to achieve it. And and of course this was
Speaker 1: a huge effort. I mean, this is not one guy
Speaker 1: going up in a plane and jumping out and deploy shoot.
Speaker 1: I mean he there was There was a huge team
Speaker 1: in place to bring this about. And of course, as
Speaker 1: Jonathan has already mentioned, this is not an effort that
Speaker 1: was backed by a government. This was completely private, um,
Speaker 1: which you know, in some respects makes things easier. Um.
Speaker 1: And yes, they didn't use any kind of spacecraft. They
Speaker 1: did have a pressurized capsule that was lifted into place
Speaker 1: by a very very tall balloon. Yeah. Actually the balloon
Speaker 1: got less tall as it got as it gut further
Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere because of the changes in pressure.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's probably the first thing we should talk about,
Speaker 1: is the air pressure and why uh, you know, why
Speaker 1: there were so many things need to be in place
Speaker 1: in order for him to have a successful jump. Um
Speaker 1: air pressure changes at elevations, right, so uh, you know
Speaker 1: it makes sense. You you figured when you think about
Speaker 1: the Earth and you think about the atmosphere around the Earth, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're on the surface of the Earth, you've got
Speaker 1: more atmosphere above you pressing down on you than you
Speaker 1: would if you were quite a bit of the ways up.
Speaker 1: And so at sea level you have one atmosphere of pressure. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're wondering, well, what does that mean in terms
Speaker 1: of other units, that's that's just under fifteen pounds per
Speaker 1: square inch or and you're welcome Europe that I did
Speaker 1: this one point oh three kilograms per square centimeter. But
Speaker 1: one atmosphere is a much easier way of saying that.
Speaker 1: So that's at sea level, and that's the average. Okay,
Speaker 1: So even even at sea level, that number of changes somewhat,
Speaker 1: but the average is that number now at thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand feet, which is, you know, around where a lot
Speaker 1: of commercial air flights might be somewhere around in that area,
Speaker 1: which is ten See I did this all the way around.
Speaker 1: It's about three and a half pounds per square inch,
Speaker 1: so remember it at C level fifteen pounds feet around
Speaker 1: three and a half pounds. That, by the way, is
Speaker 1: a point to five ms per square centimeter uh and
Speaker 1: UH or point to four atmospheres. At around sixty two
Speaker 1: thousand ft or nineteen thousand meters, the pressure has reached
Speaker 1: a point where it's it's so um so much less
Speaker 1: than what we experience that we can have some pretty
Speaker 1: serious health risks. Um. You know, we're we've evolved on
Speaker 1: this planet to to be able to survive in the
Speaker 1: conditions of our environment. So you know, we're used to
Speaker 1: having this certain amount of air pressure. Beyond that we
Speaker 1: don't do so well. And if the pressure is too light,
Speaker 1: then our our blood can actually start to have gas
Speaker 1: form within it and then it'll will expand, which is
Speaker 1: called ebulism. And it is not a good thing to
Speaker 1: have happened to you. So that's why pressure is a
Speaker 1: big deal. And of course we haven't even reached the
Speaker 1: the height of the where the jump was because the
Speaker 1: goal for this jump was to jump out at around
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty thousand feet uh. In actuality, he
Speaker 1: got all the way up to around a d one
Speaker 1: hundred feet, which is thirty nine thousand, forty five, which
Speaker 1: is just over twenty four miles up or thirty nine
Speaker 1: kilometers for those of you who wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: not divide that number of meters there. Um, it took
Speaker 1: about two hours from to get there. But at that
Speaker 1: at that elevation, air pressure is less than one pound
Speaker 1: per square inch or less than point oh seven kilograms
Speaker 1: per square centimeter or or point zero seven atmospheres, so
Speaker 1: you're talking about very little air pressure at all. And
Speaker 1: because of that, both the capsule he was in and
Speaker 1: of course the suit he was wearing needed to be
Speaker 1: pressurized so that he would not have any major health
Speaker 1: risks when he when he jumped out or just from
Speaker 1: the ascent. So the capsule was was pressurized first, and
Speaker 1: it was done that way so that he would not
Speaker 1: have to pressurize his suit from the from the ground
Speaker 1: as they started to ascend um. By having it in
Speaker 1: the capsule, it took some of that that that power,
Speaker 1: that energy that was needed off the the actual suit,
Speaker 1: which is good. You want to preserve that as much
Speaker 1: as you can. Once they reached the float height, which
Speaker 1: is where the balloon was not going to rise any
Speaker 1: higher and not as high as it was going to go. Uh,
Speaker 1: then that was when it was time to open up
Speaker 1: the door and start off the jump. Well, that that's
Speaker 1: where they had to depressurize the cabin and pressurize the suit.
Speaker 1: Actually pressurize the suit first, obviously very important step, but
Speaker 1: then depressurized the cabin so that they could open up
Speaker 1: the door, because you can't open that door otherwise there's
Speaker 1: too much pressure on the inside. It's just like if
Speaker 1: you're in an airplane and you have the emergency exit,
Speaker 1: the emergency exit, if you are at altitude, it's going
Speaker 1: to have so much tremendous amount of pressure on the
Speaker 1: inside because the airplane itself is pressurized while the outside
Speaker 1: is not. You can't open that door. You're just not
Speaker 1: physically strong enough. Same thing here. UM. Once it was
Speaker 1: de pressurized, he could open up the door. His his
Speaker 1: suit had been pressurized. UM, and that was what gave
Speaker 1: him that safety of at least from the environment. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many other things you have to worry about,
Speaker 1: but as far as air pressure goes, that was how
Speaker 1: they took care of that. And of course all the
Speaker 1: different parts of his suit were sealed so that there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be any leaks like the The gloves had uh
Speaker 1: these these rotating locks on them so that you could
Speaker 1: not have them airtight with the suit, as as well
Speaker 1: as the helmet. UM. This was really important because I
Speaker 1: Kittinger had a jump where he had a hole in
Speaker 1: one of his gloves and um, apparently the the glove
Speaker 1: ended up for the pressure, it ended up sticking to
Speaker 1: his hand enough so that it wasn't a huge problem.
Speaker 1: H And he did not report this to ground control
Speaker 1: because of fear that they would cancel the jump. And
Speaker 1: but by the time he landed there was a problem.
Speaker 1: His hand started to swell and apparently swelled to about
Speaker 1: twice the size of normal UH due to the UH
Speaker 1: the changes in pressure and and and and so that's
Speaker 1: something you don't want to have happen if you can
Speaker 1: avoid it. That's true, that's true. Yeah. The the suit
Speaker 1: was actually made by a company from Massachusetts. David Clark. Um,
Speaker 1: they made suits for the Geminy missions as well as
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle missions, Gemini missions. If that sounds like an
Speaker 1: internal joke, it it sort of is. You gotta listen
Speaker 1: to you. Previous Space podcast. We did a series on
Speaker 1: the Gemini missions a few years ago. One of the
Speaker 1: uh astronauts from that time kept pronouncing it Geminy, and
Speaker 1: Jonathan's blood pressure just kept rising every time he said it.
Speaker 1: Jimminy Cricket. Yeah, so yeah, it was the same company
Speaker 1: that did that. They've they've made all kinds of suits
Speaker 1: for aeronautics and space for decades now. So um, you
Speaker 1: know they're they're well known, well respected firm to to
Speaker 1: have done that. And obviously since the jump was successful
Speaker 1: and no spoilers intended, but you know, well it's nice
Speaker 1: to know. It's must say. You can't really spoil something
Speaker 1: that already happened. Um, well know, if somebody's just now
Speaker 1: hearing about this, yeah, well then you have been hiding
Speaker 1: in a hole. You can you can watch actually watch
Speaker 1: this live when it happened, and from about an hour
Speaker 1: into it. I turned it on after he'd been on
Speaker 1: for an hour because the ascent took just over two
Speaker 1: hours to get to the right altitude. So UM, Jonathan
Speaker 1: told me about how he felt when bum Gardner opened
Speaker 1: the capsule door and started to step out, and they
Speaker 1: call him fearless Felix, that's the nickname he is. Sheer
Speaker 1: terror was what was going through me seeing his Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get into it. But but to go back
Speaker 1: to the suit, it also could withstand temperatures as low
Speaker 1: as minus ninety degrees fahrenheit or minus sixty eight celsius
Speaker 1: or over one degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven point eight
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. So also very important because of course at
Speaker 1: that elevation you were also talking about very very cold temperatures.
Speaker 1: Um and in fact, there were parts of his fall
Speaker 1: that were colder than others. It was interesting because it
Speaker 1: it actually warmed up a little bit from um, I
Speaker 1: forget fresh No no, no, no, no, not friction. I'm
Speaker 1: just talking about the ambient temperature actually warmed up, like
Speaker 1: there was a point in the atmosphere. Yeah. No, I
Speaker 1: was watching and they talked about it too. They said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, closer to the sun. I'm like, really, you're
Speaker 1: not that much closer The Sun's ninety three million miles away.
Speaker 1: I think a few feet isn't a huge difference, but
Speaker 1: but it was interesting. You could watch and the temperature
Speaker 1: gauge was going up. It went really low and then
Speaker 1: started creeping up again, just slightly, not like it wasn't
Speaker 1: like skyrocketing, but at the height where he was jumping at,
Speaker 1: the temperature was around minus ten fahrenheit, which is minus
Speaker 1: twenty three celsius. So I blame house. Yeah, methane production.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're talking about? Okay, I was trying
Speaker 1: to see where you're going there. Note not based on
Speaker 1: scientific fact, mostly because I just wanted to say cows.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So the suit had to be able to
Speaker 1: withstand these cold temperatures as well. And uh, his suit
Speaker 1: also had very It looked a lot like the space
Speaker 1: suits you would see, uh you know in any NASA
Speaker 1: presentation or if you watch any of those launches. It
Speaker 1: looks a lot like those. Actually, it also looked a
Speaker 1: little bit um just from appearance's sake, uh, sort of
Speaker 1: like the stuff that race car drivers wear, probably mostly
Speaker 1: because the you know the names and the de cows
Speaker 1: and things, right. Yeah, So it also had it also
Speaker 1: had a sun visor that that Felix could put down
Speaker 1: or up if he needed to. Uh, and the the
Speaker 1: visor itself was heated in order to have it u
Speaker 1: avoid icing issues. You know, obviously if you're if you're
Speaker 1: going through super cold temperatures and you've you know, we
Speaker 1: give off a lot of water vapor, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: and could there could be a lot of icing problems,
Speaker 1: both on the inside and outside of a suit. And uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, that was one of the issues that almost
Speaker 1: seemed to be a big problem during the the ascent,
Speaker 1: because it looked like, according to Felix, that the face
Speaker 1: plate was not heating properly. And uh, you know they
Speaker 1: I think the first time I heard about that was
Speaker 1: when he was around eighty thousand feet or so and
Speaker 1: still rising, obviously still climbing. And and then you hear
Speaker 1: the people on who are speaking during the whole ascent,
Speaker 1: you know, the people who are relaying information to the audience, saying, everyone,
Speaker 1: here's trying to find out what options we have, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, what options do you have? And the
Speaker 1: the option, the biggest, like last ditch option thing, you know,
Speaker 1: in order to get him back to Earth safely. You
Speaker 1: you you ditch the jump. But the capsule itself was
Speaker 1: connected to the balloon and hat and could disconnect and
Speaker 1: had its own parachute. So the worst case scenario, uh,
Speaker 1: action would be to cut the tie to the balloon,
Speaker 1: to deploy the parachute on the capsule and have the
Speaker 1: capsule come down to Earth. Now that was not ideal,
Speaker 1: uh most well, first of all, you're aborting the jump,
Speaker 1: so that's not ideal. But also it would have been
Speaker 1: a bit of a rough landing. Now, the capsule itself
Speaker 1: had a crash sections built into it, crash pads to
Speaker 1: absorb some of that impact if it were to um
Speaker 1: to have to land now. And and of course they
Speaker 1: did detach the capsule at the end of the jump anyway,
Speaker 1: because they wanted to retreat the capsule. But um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's deaf. Would not have been a soft landing.
Speaker 1: It would have been a little rough. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because the inside the capsule again looked very much like
Speaker 1: the Gemini capsules. Um it was. It was a tiny
Speaker 1: little thing. Really. The capsule was six ft tall or
Speaker 1: one pot eight meters and it weighed pounds or one
Speaker 1: thousands And yeah, I mean you take a look at
Speaker 1: this and you're like, wow, this looks like it would fit,
Speaker 1: you know, in a in a special casing on the
Speaker 1: top of a rocket. It really did look like some
Speaker 1: of those early NASA spacecraft. True enough, So should we
Speaker 1: talk about the about the jump? Sure? Um, I mean
Speaker 1: there's other there are other things actually before I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the balloon. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the balloon because the balloon is crazy, so it has
Speaker 1: its own story, actually five or so of them. Well,
Speaker 1: the the weird thing I thought, the strangest thing to
Speaker 1: me about the balloon was how incredibly thin that material was.
Speaker 1: So uh it's it was made out of polyethylene plastic
Speaker 1: film and it was point zero zero zero eight inches thick.
Speaker 1: That's pretty thin. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty thin. Or point
Speaker 1: zero zero zero two point zero zero zero two centimeters thick.
Speaker 1: There we go, We're gonna get that number right, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, super super thin. They called it a forty
Speaker 1: acre dry cleaner bag because it was essentially made of
Speaker 1: very similar stuff. Now, if you're thinking like, how could
Speaker 1: that possibly bear the weight of this capsule, which you
Speaker 1: know weighs quite a bit, uh, the real the way
Speaker 1: they did it was they used this load tape that
Speaker 1: was connected to the balloon, and the load tape was
Speaker 1: actually what bore the load of the capsule. The tape
Speaker 1: also had in it a special reflective material so that
Speaker 1: the balloon would show up on radar, very important for
Speaker 1: any aircraft in the area, although of course the mission
Speaker 1: was working along with air traffic controllers to make sure
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be any problems on that because you know,
Speaker 1: you can't really direct where a balloon is going to go.
Speaker 1: You are you are at the mercy of the winds.
Speaker 1: Although this was over the desert in the southwestern United States,
Speaker 1: it was populated areas right near Roswell, New Mexico, so
Speaker 1: it's really just the military and aliens that were there.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm totally joking. The whole Roswell alien
Speaker 1: thing is absolutely ludicrous. But anyway, um so, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that balloon was created by a t a aerospace and uh,
Speaker 1: here's some here's some stats on the balloons, some some
Speaker 1: for people who are curious about how big this was.
Speaker 1: So uninflated it was one ft long or one point
Speaker 1: six meters now at the height once it was inflated,
Speaker 1: and which takes about an hour. Takes an hour to
Speaker 1: inflate this balloon with helium. They used helium because it's
Speaker 1: a nonflammable very important. If you've been wondering why there's
Speaker 1: a helium shortage, Yeah yeah, talk about that's a big
Speaker 1: balloon fill up with helium. Yeah yeah. The yell HC
Speaker 1: might have a few things to say to Felix. Explain
Speaker 1: to your kid why she can't get a door a balloon,
Speaker 1: now you know? So, yeah, just getting the door balloon
Speaker 1: filled with hydrogen. I can't imagine how anything bad happening
Speaker 1: from that. Take it to a birthday party. Don't do that.
Speaker 1: Hydrogen is highly flammable. That's why they went with helium
Speaker 1: the candles. So the height of balloon once it was
Speaker 1: fully inflated at takeoff was about five or one hundred
Speaker 1: sixty seven point six meters, and once it reached its altitude,
Speaker 1: the height was more like three hundred thirty four point
Speaker 1: eight two ft or a hundred two point one because, again,
Speaker 1: as it got higher up in the atmosphere, the atmospheric
Speaker 1: pressure decreased, the balloon started to um. The height began
Speaker 1: to decrease, but it's it's diameter increased. They began to
Speaker 1: round out quite a bit because when you first looked
Speaker 1: at it looked like a tear drop. It was kind
Speaker 1: of tall and skinny, really compared compared to what we
Speaker 1: think of when we do think of birthday party balloons,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean those are tear drop shaped too,
Speaker 1: but not this is a lot longer than that, right,
Speaker 1: So once it got up to the mushroom here, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely rounded out as it got higher up and uninflated.
Speaker 1: It weighed a smelt three thousand seven eight pounds or
Speaker 1: one thousands you just wanted to say smelled, I did.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and it also had a vent so that
Speaker 1: it could vent off helium. Now this is also really important.
Speaker 1: You know what bugs me? It didn't It didn't vent anger,
Speaker 1: it vented helium. Yeah. No. The the reason for the
Speaker 1: vent is very important because the helium was expanding as
Speaker 1: the balloon was climbing, right, So at there does come
Speaker 1: a point where there's a possibility that that expansion could
Speaker 1: damage the balloon itself and tear the balloon. So the
Speaker 1: balloon needed to have a way of venting out excess
Speaker 1: helium in order to avoid that. And in fact, they
Speaker 1: did vent helium at least once or twice, especially once
Speaker 1: they passed that hundred twenty thousand feet mark, because again
Speaker 1: was their goal, and they went right by it and
Speaker 1: kept on going. Um, so, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: point where there was some concern about making sure that
Speaker 1: the the balloon and capsule maintained integrity because it was
Speaker 1: starting to go beyond what they had planned. So as
Speaker 1: as long as they didn't run into any wire coat hangers,
Speaker 1: because that's was to be the downfall of most dry
Speaker 1: cleaner bags. Right, Yeah, that's exactly the problem. Jonathan from
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen here to interrupt this classic episode before
Speaker 1: we take any more leaps, we're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: jump over to a break to thank our sponsor. They
Speaker 1: had nine high definition cameras that were mounted on both
Speaker 1: the suit and on an inside the capsule. So they
Speaker 1: had cameras mounted on on these arms pointed back at
Speaker 1: the capsule, so you could get these great views of
Speaker 1: the capsule as it was going up, also as the
Speaker 1: door opened, which that's the part where I was terrified,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk about that in a second. But there
Speaker 1: are also cameras on the suits they could capture footage
Speaker 1: during the actual jump and plus beyond that they had
Speaker 1: a helicopter that was using a camera mounted on a
Speaker 1: stable as Asian gyroscope to track Felix's movements, and they
Speaker 1: had ground cameras on these huge trucks with these uh,
Speaker 1: these enormous basis that were motorized, so they could track
Speaker 1: the progress of the balloon. And it it's phenomenal to
Speaker 1: me because you think, that's a balloon that is more
Speaker 1: or less twenty four miles up in the air. So
Speaker 1: to have a camera that can capture something that's that
Speaker 1: far away is pretty amazing. You know. You think about
Speaker 1: that for a second, you're like, well, yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: a digital zoom on my camera because at the one
Speaker 1: point seven and well, this camera can capture something that's
Speaker 1: twenty four miles away. Well, tracking the balloon was a
Speaker 1: whole lot easier than tracking Felix after he stepped out
Speaker 1: of the capsule. Right, he's much first of all, Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't reflectively smaller, although not that much smaller. It's
Speaker 1: the six ft tall capsule. He was moving a whole
Speaker 1: lot fast. Yes, yes, because he was he was going downwards. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that was that was definitely. I mean, the
Speaker 1: the footage that they captured was pretty phenomenal, and especially
Speaker 1: when you sit there and think about the challenges involved
Speaker 1: and and beyond that, not just capturing the footage, but
Speaker 1: transmitting the footage, getting that live feed from the capsule,
Speaker 1: You're thinking, wow, that's they had to dedicate a lot
Speaker 1: of bandwidth, you know, in order to get that information
Speaker 1: from the capsule to the ground and streaming out live.
Speaker 1: And in fact, they had three dedicated video down links
Speaker 1: with built in redundancy to get that information down to
Speaker 1: the ground, and then they had a fiber optic network
Speaker 1: on the ground to process that information. And they had
Speaker 1: live switching so they could switch you know, different cameras
Speaker 1: at different times to give the best angle or the
Speaker 1: best camera experience at any given moment, which was pretty
Speaker 1: you know, this was it was clearly something that the
Speaker 1: whole media side of it was. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of thought put toward it, which is sure you know
Speaker 1: that that's so getting to the actual jump, once they
Speaker 1: got to the point where uh, they had reached the
Speaker 1: right altitude, uh, they had to go through a a
Speaker 1: very long checklist to make sure that everything was prepared
Speaker 1: before the jump, and that involved pressurizing the suit, disconnecting
Speaker 1: the suits from the suit from the capsule because things,
Speaker 1: the capsule had its own oxygen supply, because again at
Speaker 1: that elevation, uh, the atmosphere is so thin that we
Speaker 1: would not be able to breathe up there. So the
Speaker 1: capsule it's own oxygen supply, and then the suit did
Speaker 1: as well. So he had to detach the suit from
Speaker 1: the capsule because clearly you can't jump if you're still
Speaker 1: got all these hoses connected where you can, No, it
Speaker 1: would not go well. So there was that there was
Speaker 1: the whole deep pressurization, opening up the door, moving the
Speaker 1: chair around quite a bit. The chair inside the capsule
Speaker 1: could move forward and backward a little so that he
Speaker 1: could reach various controls um and it was the point
Speaker 1: where he had to move the chair back. He had
Speaker 1: depressurized the capsule, pressurized the suit, the door had opened,
Speaker 1: and then they used an exterior camera to capture the
Speaker 1: moment where he moves. He's lifted his feet up so
Speaker 1: they're above the threshold of the little capsule door, and
Speaker 1: then he moves the chair forward, which means his feet
Speaker 1: come out of the doorway and over nothing. And that's
Speaker 1: where I freaked out. That point he was he had
Speaker 1: to stand on a platform that was about the size
Speaker 1: of an average skateboard. Yeah, and there he isn't a
Speaker 1: space suit standing on a skateboard sized platform, holding onto
Speaker 1: these rails that are on either side of the capsule door.
Speaker 1: And uh, once he had to go ahead, he let
Speaker 1: go and started falling. And I don't think I breathed
Speaker 1: until until he stopped spinning. So here's one of the
Speaker 1: issues about jumping at that height. So again, atmosphere is
Speaker 1: really thin, right, you don't immediately start to slow down.
Speaker 1: In fact, the atmosphere is so thin that you will
Speaker 1: go faster than you would if you jumped from uh,
Speaker 1: you know, any other height. Like you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have anything pushing against you, or not not as much
Speaker 1: pushing against because there is atmosphere out there, it's just
Speaker 1: not as much it's in the stratosphere at this point. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And in case you're wondering, I happened to catch a
Speaker 1: news report in which they had asked him, and Felix
Speaker 1: said that he didn't look down, he was looking straight out,
Speaker 1: which at that at that altitude, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: you could avoid it because the earth is you could
Speaker 1: see the curvature of the Earth, and you're going, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's something else that's kind of interesting is that curvature.
Speaker 1: You can see it at that altitude. But uh, the
Speaker 1: if you look at the footage from the jump, the
Speaker 1: curvature is incredibly evident. Like you, it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: it's obvious. The reason it's obvious is because the camera lens,
Speaker 1: it's a wide angle camera lens, so it artificially has
Speaker 1: bent the edges so it looks like the the curvature
Speaker 1: is much more It looks how much further up than
Speaker 1: he really was. Um. But in reality that you could
Speaker 1: you from what I've been told, you can see the
Speaker 1: curvature at that altitude. It's just not as dramatic as
Speaker 1: what it appeared as on the live stream. So I
Speaker 1: just wanted to point that out. But but at that altitude,
Speaker 1: he he um. He moved very quickly into a very
Speaker 1: fast speed thirty two ft per second per second or
Speaker 1: nine point seven five four per second square that's the
Speaker 1: acceleration of gravity. People, if you if you are, if
Speaker 1: you are at all interested in physics, you will memorize
Speaker 1: that and use it all the line. So he rapidly
Speaker 1: increased to that speed. His his his top speed uh
Speaker 1: is estimated because we at the time of the recording
Speaker 1: of this podcast, we do not have the final information.
Speaker 1: But his top speed was estimated at eight hundred thirty
Speaker 1: three point nine miles per hour or one thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred forty two point eight kilometers per hour mock one
Speaker 1: point to four. Yes, so mock being the speed of sound.
Speaker 1: He had broken the sound barrier, the first human to
Speaker 1: do so un unaided by any sort of vehicle. Yes,
Speaker 1: And that's another interesting point than the interview with the
Speaker 1: scientist that I had watched said that the speed of
Speaker 1: sound is a little different at that altitude. To write sound,
Speaker 1: sound travels, you know, the speed of sound is dependent
Speaker 1: upon the medium through which it's traveling. Sound will travel
Speaker 1: at a different rate of speed depending on if you
Speaker 1: are in you know, it will travel at different race
Speaker 1: speed from sea level two feet. Uh. It travels at
Speaker 1: a different rate if it's through water or through a solid.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, it's one of the In fact, we
Speaker 1: should might as well. This is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a tangent, but lights the same way light travels at
Speaker 1: you've heard of the speed of light being a constant
Speaker 1: that's true, but that's talking about the speed of light
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. The speed of light will change depending
Speaker 1: on what it's traveling through. Now most of the time,
Speaker 1: for us as human beings, that changes uh imperceptible to
Speaker 1: us without incredibly sensitive measuring equipment. So to us, it's
Speaker 1: you know, going at at the speed of light or
Speaker 1: just a hair under the speed of light is effectively
Speaker 1: the same thing for us. And I've tried to observe
Speaker 1: that myself at my home, but I keep getting dust
Speaker 1: in my eye every time I open that little bag
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem like there's any light in there
Speaker 1: at all. But it may be the dust. I can't
Speaker 1: tell right inside your vacuum now, so you should go
Speaker 1: with the dice and that's the bag, clear. Ye. Chris
Speaker 1: and I are going to freak out a little bit
Speaker 1: more about jumping out of a capsule and space, but
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: It's funny because when you get the idea of somebody
Speaker 1: jumping out of an airplane, you're doing a traditional skydive.
Speaker 1: Most of us have a pretty good idea of what
Speaker 1: that quote unquote looks like. You you you stand in
Speaker 1: the door. You jump out of the plane and you
Speaker 1: instantly put out your arms and legs and you just
Speaker 1: sort of glide until you feel like it's time to
Speaker 1: open your shoot. Then you pull it and go. Well,
Speaker 1: Felix wasn't as graceful, but it wasn't his fault. See
Speaker 1: is it is? It turns out that whole atmosphere being
Speaker 1: thinner thing kind of affects the way you fall at
Speaker 1: that he couldn't use air resistance to help orient himself,
Speaker 1: because that's one thing. Experienced sky divers can do all
Speaker 1: sorts of really cool maneuvers while they're while they're diving,
Speaker 1: and it's all due to the whole air resistance and
Speaker 1: being able to use their bodies to angle in certain ways.
Speaker 1: Either they can do a you know they can They
Speaker 1: can try to resist or change their wind resistance, like
Speaker 1: like reduce it to a point where they're falling very
Speaker 1: very very fast, or they can try to increase their
Speaker 1: wind resistance by increasing the surface area as much as possible.
Speaker 1: They could do somersaults and other kinds of tricks, but
Speaker 1: at that altitude there wasn't enough air, not enough atmosphere
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. So there wasn't. There
Speaker 1: wasn't that level of control, and so Felix did start spinning. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you watch the video, that also was terrifying
Speaker 1: because you could see him spinning around and around. You're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I sure hope he's able to maintain consciousness not black
Speaker 1: out because uh, Kittinger said, you know, he blacked out
Speaker 1: during his fall because of a similar issue, and that's
Speaker 1: why the drug shoot was so important, was too. It
Speaker 1: was actually I think it was not the hundred and
Speaker 1: two thousand foot jump, but the previous one that can
Speaker 1: Kilden did where he blacked out, And so that's why
Speaker 1: the drove shoot was so important for him. Um in
Speaker 1: his in his highest jump, well, yeah, you could see
Speaker 1: that spinning happening. But then once once he did start
Speaker 1: hitting the the next levels where the atmosphere is starting
Speaker 1: to to increase in density, he was able to orient
Speaker 1: himself into a traditional skydive position, the delta position. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and is that what's called That's interesting. I've never
Speaker 1: gone skydiving, so I know very little about it. Although
Speaker 1: an internet this is just between me and you. Do
Speaker 1: not tell my wife because she would flip out. But
Speaker 1: I am planning on doing a skydiving jump possibly during
Speaker 1: c E S I am really yeah, me and uh
Speaker 1: I as actar of this Weekend Tech, are thinking about
Speaker 1: doing some skydiving during CS team. Uh, I don't want
Speaker 1: to put into the into the show to the Las
Speaker 1: Vegas Convention Center, doubtful. Um, it'll be much further out
Speaker 1: into the desert. But don't tell my wife because she
Speaker 1: would flip out. Okay, pinky swear, Yeah, okay. So anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he assumed that position and then that was the point
Speaker 1: where I I said, oh good, Well, then he's clearly
Speaker 1: he's clearly conscious and he's aware of what's going on
Speaker 1: and he's able to respond. Um, he deployed his shoot
Speaker 1: at the appropriate time and uh that was a big
Speaker 1: that that got a big cheer from ground control. And
Speaker 1: did you see did you watch any of the video
Speaker 1: of his landing. It was a perfect landing. Absolutely, he
Speaker 1: it was like it was like he just stepped off
Speaker 1: a step. Like it wasn't like he just came from
Speaker 1: one thousand feet. It was like he had just walked
Speaker 1: down a set of stairs. Yeah, I would have looked
Speaker 1: like a sack of potatoes from I would have been
Speaker 1: has been dragged at least another few hundred meters, Like
Speaker 1: he's an accomplished jumper. He's an accomplished base jumper, um,
Speaker 1: which is you know, jumping off of ironically enough, it's
Speaker 1: you know, lower altitudes, bridges and all sorts of other
Speaker 1: different physical features just you know. So he's he's this
Speaker 1: is well, you wouldn't try this at home anyway, but
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not something from that that an
Speaker 1: inexperienced person did. He's uh, clearly a well accomplished jumper.
Speaker 1: And and he yeah, it was an absolutely perfect landing.
Speaker 1: And then he got as soon as he came to
Speaker 1: a stop, he went down on his knees and put
Speaker 1: his hands up in the air like that was pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. I made the comment of if I
Speaker 1: had done that, I would have made the decision. I
Speaker 1: am never leaving the ground again from now on. People
Speaker 1: bring stuff to me. I I did my part, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not going back over the ocean. You bring that
Speaker 1: continent right there. I want to go to London, bring
Speaker 1: London here. It was an absolutely amazing, amazing feat and
Speaker 1: it does have its uh, it does have a lot
Speaker 1: of importance. You might not necessarily believe that you might
Speaker 1: think of it as simply some sort of stunt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but going beyond that, I mean, there are first of all,
Speaker 1: this this kind of is a proof of concept of
Speaker 1: something that NASA was talking about in the sixties when
Speaker 1: they were thinking about if there were a problem with
Speaker 1: a spacecraft, would it be possible for astronauts to space
Speaker 1: dive back to Earth? Would it would there be any
Speaker 1: way they could do that? Um? Or is that just
Speaker 1: a you know, outside the realm of our our abilities?
Speaker 1: And they theorized that it would be possible, but they
Speaker 1: were they were never able to test it. Kittinger's jumps
Speaker 1: were kind of related to that, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the data that they collected during this jump there was
Speaker 1: stuff that they could put toward developing more safety features
Speaker 1: for astronauts as well as space tourists, because whoever thought
Speaker 1: that would become a thing. But well, um and there
Speaker 1: I saw some some people talking about the space Shuttle program,
Speaker 1: and of course the the the two famous disasters. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the people that has been working on this
Speaker 1: is um the husband of one of the people who
Speaker 1: perished in the Columbia accident. Um. They were too high
Speaker 1: to have done something like this, they were moving they
Speaker 1: were too far out from the planet when the the
Speaker 1: accident happened, and and they were moving way too fast,
Speaker 1: something like Mark seventeen. I think I remember, um reading
Speaker 1: it was a Dr Jonathan Clark, who was a former
Speaker 1: NASA flight surgeon. His wife, Laurel Um died in that accident.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, he was he was involved in
Speaker 1: the process of of going through the safety procedures here. Um.
Speaker 1: He's dedicated his life to working on safe, better safety
Speaker 1: in space. And um uh you know, as far as
Speaker 1: the Challenger incident, well, it's it's sort of unclear, um
Speaker 1: whether they would have been able to get out or not. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, some of the the procedures they developed for
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle were after that as a result of
Speaker 1: that accident. So um. But you know, in the future
Speaker 1: or depending on on the different kinds of missions that
Speaker 1: are undertaken, you know, either by NASSA or another government
Speaker 1: space agency or by private enterprise. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that this information could prove useful, um, you know, in
Speaker 1: an emergency, or you know, perhaps it is a form
Speaker 1: of space tourism. I don't know, well, And and and
Speaker 1: just learning learning what the effects are these the things
Speaker 1: that that that Felix experienced during this whole jump, I
Speaker 1: mean everything from most breaking the sound barrier that no
Speaker 1: one was really sure what would happen to a person,
Speaker 1: and if to be fair, as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, we cannot be certain that he did break
Speaker 1: that barrier because the final numbers haven't come in. He
Speaker 1: had a did you see how he would know if
Speaker 1: he broke the sound barrier his so so he has
Speaker 1: a chess plate or he had a chess plate on
Speaker 1: his on a suit that contained a lot of different sensors, telemetry,
Speaker 1: you know, information, GPS, all this kind of stuff. If
Speaker 1: the sensors detected that the suit had exceeded the speed
Speaker 1: of sound, it would send a ringtone to his helmet.
Speaker 1: But he said he was concentrating so hard on what
Speaker 1: was going on that he totally did not He didn't
Speaker 1: notice anything. So it may have gone off or it
Speaker 1: may not have gone off, and he would he doesn't
Speaker 1: know because he was you know, at that point, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of just really paying a trinch to what's going on,
Speaker 1: especially once you know he came out of that spin.
Speaker 1: So I'm flying here, Yeah, I got a lady I'm
Speaker 1: flying here. Yeah, but yeah, there are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of There are a lot of things that this
Speaker 1: could help with, including designing new types of space suits
Speaker 1: that are effective and are not as you know, we
Speaker 1: can always make advances in that that realm. We don't
Speaker 1: want it to be so clunky that you can't maneuver
Speaker 1: around within the confines of a space vehicle. But it
Speaker 1: still has to have the adequate levels of protection necessary
Speaker 1: to make to maintain the health and safety of our astronauts.
Speaker 1: So that's an important thing to to keep in mind too. Granted,
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think most of our space
Speaker 1: suits will necessarily have a sponsor logos on them, but
Speaker 1: they will. Um. I was disappointed that the the the
Speaker 1: space suit didn't have wings. Well, it was interesting too
Speaker 1: to uh to compare and you know, I'm going in
Speaker 1: my head here looking at the the suits that they
Speaker 1: wore in uh NASA launches from the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: more so much bulkier um than this. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: they were they were intended for different purposes, but I
Speaker 1: imagine the equipment in this newer suit was far more
Speaker 1: advanced than what kitten Ger wore. On his jumps and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that with the technology advances, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny in a way, they resemble more what Hollywood
Speaker 1: um suggests for you know, space fighter pilots than from
Speaker 1: what the astronauts, the the actual astronauts from from our
Speaker 1: own planet um or back in the days when that
Speaker 1: was so common. I look forward to to the day
Speaker 1: when we have space suits for space jumps that are
Speaker 1: like the ones in the documentary Star Trek, not the
Speaker 1: not the original motion picture Star Trek, but the the J. J.
Speaker 1: Abrams documentary Star Trek. Yeah, the J. J Abrams documentary
Speaker 1: Star Trek colon the lens flare caught me off. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you have anything else you want to talk about? This?
Speaker 1: This jump in particular, it was a really neat thing
Speaker 1: to watch live and and Twitter was going bonkers as
Speaker 1: this was happening. I saw so many people I know
Speaker 1: tweeting about this, and um uh it just seemed like
Speaker 1: there was an overall sense of excitement and and not
Speaker 1: I was not the only terrified person on Earth watching this.
Speaker 1: Um And you can watch the entire presentation as well.
Speaker 1: It's it's up online so you can go and watch,
Speaker 1: or you can watch segments of it if you don't have,
Speaker 1: you know, two and a half hours to burn. But uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely something something amazing. It's one of those
Speaker 1: moments in human achievement where you think, wow, it never
Speaker 1: would have occurred to me that this is something that
Speaker 1: anyone would want to do, and if they wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, I can't eagine it being possible. And yet
Speaker 1: both of those things happened. Yep, it was. It was
Speaker 1: an amazing event. And uh, I'm glad it ended so well. Yes,
Speaker 1: steps you're perfect, Yep, yep, it was so many different
Speaker 1: things could have gone wrong. I'm glad of a lot
Speaker 1: of really smart people worked on this to make sure
Speaker 1: it went off without without any major glitches. So my
Speaker 1: hat is off to you, and there we have our
Speaker 1: classic tech stuff episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. It
Speaker 1: was interesting to go back and look at this moment
Speaker 1: in history, which I think a lot of people kind
Speaker 1: of forget about now. Things changed so fast. We have
Speaker 1: so many things dominating the news cycle that sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be hard to remember these sort of pivotal, exciting
Speaker 1: moments where the world was watching as someone did something
Speaker 1: truly extraordinary, so it's fun to go back and look
Speaker 1: at this. If you have suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, you can reach out to me with the
Speaker 1: email tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, where
Speaker 1: you can pop on over to our website that's tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast ask dot com that has an archive of
Speaker 1: all of our past episodes. You can find links to
Speaker 1: where we are on social media, and you can also
Speaker 1: find a link to our online store, where every purchase
Speaker 1: you make goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. Ye
Speaker 1: hext Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
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