Red Bull Stratos

[Mass Zero]

Are you guys watching this? Right now an experienced parachutist called Felix Baumgartner is in a balloon on his way to 120,000 ft. altitude... so he can jump from it. Yes, he'll come crashing down at the insane speed of 365 maaany mph and break the speed of sound barrier.

It's incredibly risky, as at that altitude his blood can start boiling quickly and basically that provides the possibility for him to explode. If he survives he'll have set a new world record, one which 2 previous parachutists have already died trying to set.

You can follow it live at http://www.redbullstratos.com/live.

Personally I think he's not going to survive the jump. He's completely lost it.

[Kirin]

LOL so we might see a death live?

[Dark-Lumina]

Most definitely. It's just insane what people would do...

[Kurayami]

He survived. Amazing.

[Myth3842]

Why everybody gotta be so negative.

[Hulft]

This dude is dead already, Death is impressed by what he did and did not come to get him yet. Just a matter of time... Anyway, this was pretty awesome.

[Veysey]

Just to say, wasn't one of the previous record holders working with him to make this successful? Either way, goes to show what passion and preparation can accomplish :D

[Kraid]

A good way of trolling someone is to tell them it was faked:

[Cookies]

To be honest the amazing part was that he managed to pull himself out of that spin. The technology that he used has been around for ages and the risks were not as major as people make them sound really.

One question remains though, he broke the speed of sound at that altitude (which is around 600 mph) and the ground speed of sound (761 mph I think) but would he have broken the speed of sound falling somewhere under standard conditions (1 atm of pressure, rather than the much lower pressure of being very high up)? It's purely academic but I don't think it really counts breaking the sound barrier under conditions where that is much easier (lower pressure and largely non-existant air resistance). Still, it's pretty cool to be travelling over 800 mph completely unpowered, that's about 40 mph over the land speed record and about 1 third of the air speed record, which is totally awesome.

I've been nerding out for weeks about the maths, I love it.

[Kraid]

To be honest the amazing part was that he managed to pull himself out of that spin. The technology that he used has been around for ages and the risks were not as major as people make them sound really. One question remains though, he broke the speed of sound at that altitude (which is around 600 mph) and the ground speed of sound (761 mph I think) but would he have broken the speed of sound falling somewhere under standard conditions (1 atm of pressure, rather than the much lower pressure of being very high up)? It's purely academic but I don't think it really counts breaking the sound barrier under conditions where that is much easier (lower pressure and largely non-existant air resistance). Still, it's pretty cool to be travelling over 800 mph completely unpowered, that's about 40 mph over the land speed record and about 1 third of the air speed record, which is totally awesome. I've been nerding out for weeks about the maths, I love it.

I think it counts. Sure it's 'easier', but a man in freefall breaking the sound barrier is still an accomplishment no matter what. If he broke it, he broke it.