American woman to set skydiving record from 25 miles...

As reported by the Independent, Cheryl Stearns plans to skydive from 25 miles (130,000 ft or 39,640 m) up! Her mission is not just for glory against her competitors (Michel Fournier (France) and Rodd Millner (Australia)):

"Shuttle crews do not have much time to prepare for bail-out emergencies," said Ms Stearns. "Our mission will be to help researchers understand how pressure suits, and humans, react at 130,000ft. Nothing has been tested above 102,800ft."

The last guy to do this was US Air Force Colonel Joseph Kittinger in 1960. I've got a great research paper somewhere where his jump is discussed from a physics-point of view... it turns out that if you enter the atmosphere going very fast, you asymptotically approach terminal velocity from above... instead of what we normally experience where one asymptotically approaches terminal velocity from below.

Posted by joebeone at Diciembre 19, 2003 10:48 AM