Supersonic Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner was faster than he or anyone else thought during his record-setting jump in October last year from 38km up.
The parachutist known as “Fearless Felix” reached 1,357kph, according to official numbers released on Monday. That is equivalent to Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound.
His top speed initially was estimated at 16kph slower at 1,342kph, or Mach 1.24.
Either way, he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and hopped from a capsule hoisted by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.
Baumgartner was supersonic for a half-minute — “quite remarkable,” according to Brian Utley, the record-keeping official who was present for the feat on Oct. 14 last year.
The 43-year-old’s heart rate remained below 185 beats a minute and his breathing was fairly steady.
The leap was from an altitude of 38,969m. That is 75m lower than original estimates, but still stratospheric.
“He jumped from a little bit lower, but he actually went a little bit faster, which was pretty exciting,” said Art Thompson, technical project director for the Red Bull-sponsored project.
“It’s fun for us to see reaching Mach speeds and proving out a lot of the safety systems,” Thompson said in a phone interview from his aerospace company in Lancaster, California.
Thompson said everything pretty much unfolded as anticipated, with no big surprises in the final report. The updated records were provided by Utley, official observer for the National Aeronautic Association’s contest and records board. Utley was in Roswell, New Mexico, for Baumgartner’s grand finale following two test jumps.
Based on all the data collected from sensors on Baumgartner’s suit, Utley determined that Baumgartner was 34 seconds into his jump when he reached Mach 1. The speed for breaking the sound barrier depends on the temperature at a given altitude; for Baumgartner, that came together just shy of 33,528m.
He reached peak speed by the time he was at 27,800m, 50 seconds into the jump, and was back to subsonic by 23,000m, give or take, 64 seconds into his free fall.
His entire free fall lasted four minutes, 20 seconds. He used a parachute to cover the final 1,500m, landing on his feet in the desert outside Roswell.
Not everything went well.
Baumgartner went into a dreaded flat spin while still supersonic. He spun for 13 seconds at approximately 60 revolutions per minute, making 14 to 16 spins before using his body to regain control, Thompson said. The skydiver was well within safety limits the entire time, he added. Baumgartner’s brain remained under 2G, or two times the force of gravity, during the spin.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion