(Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story)
Twenty-four miles. Think about traveling somewhere twenty-four
miles from your current location. Your perspective on that distance would
change depending on your mode of transportation. In an automobile, with light
traffic and higher speed limits, you could drive twenty-four miles in a half
hour or less. On a bicycle, pedaling at an average speed, you could make it in
about two hours. Walking that distance could take around eight hours, if you're
like me.
Now imagine that same distance, twenty-four miles, straight
up in the sky. Seemingly at the edge of space. To give it a little perspective,
when you fly with a commercial airline, you might top out around five miles.
If you've been paying any attention to the news lately, you
might know where I'm going with this. Last Sunday a brave man named Felix
Baumgartner climbed into a small capsule and, using the power of a huge hot air
balloon, rose 128,100 feet above the earth (over 24 miles). Wearing a special suit to
protect him from instantly freezing or suffocating from lack of oxygen, he
stepped off a tiny platform, arched his back, and started a most amazing
freefall.
The camera attached to the capsule showed him falling to an
earth that was barely distinguishable. I watched it live, or almost live, as
the sponsors built in thirty seconds of delay in case of a disaster.
I've included a very short clip with a few of the highlights.
This gives you a tiny taste of the tension I felt as Felix stepped onto the
platform and into the atmosphere.
He broke several world records including:
The highest freefall;
The highest manned balloon flight, and;
The first human to break the sound barrier in freefall.
Felix traveled 833 mph, faster than the speed of sound,
before being slowed down by denser air. His only protection from the deadly
atmosphere surrounding him was a very well-insulated flight suit, one that
would also allow him to fly under canopy and perform a gentle landing.
Because he was descending so quickly, he failed to break the
previous record for the longest freefall. Felix had a "mere" 4:20 minute
descent before his parachute opened. To put that into perspective, a normal
freefall usually lasts from 30 to 45 seconds, with a speed of around 120 mph. The
freefall record he didn't break belonged to Col. Joe Kittinger, who in 1960 ascended
in a balloon to 102,800 feet and then fell for 4:36 minutes before deploying his
parachute.
I watched Felix launch in his little capsule and hot air
balloon, then took a two hour break, and watched the last half hour with the
final sequence checklist (given to him by Col. Kittinger) and the entire nine
minute journey back to solid ground. It was exciting and scary at the same
time.
And it made me wonder – besides the "cool" factor,
why spend all this money and risk a life to leap from the edge of space?
Because of our global connectiveness, we humans tend to
think that we know so much. After all, we have satellites to map the entire planet.
We've been to the moon and back, circled the globe in space shuttles, and now
have our own mechanical ET exploring the surface of Mars. But what do we really
know? Seventy percent of our planet is covered in water, much of our oceans are
inaccessible and unexplored. Earth is but a minuscule speck in the universe,
and perhaps our universe is a small speck in something much bigger that we will
never be able to observe. http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-many-universes-are-there
We don't know a
lot more than we do know. Exploration
and new discoveries are interesting to say the least, and who knows—someday these
findings might save the planet and all humanity.
I was disappointed when I heard a few years ago that
our government was shutting down the space shuttle program. However, thanks to
private companies like Red Bull, who sponsored Felix Baumgartner's record jump
and skydive, we can still find pioneers willing to risk their lives in search
of the next miraculous discovery; on earth, in the ocean, and in space.
Excellent post, Cathy!
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