Supersonic Skydiving

Almost six years ago, we talked about the story of Michel Fournier, a retired French army officer who planned to skydive from a height of 25 miles. That plan and a subsequent attempt one year later both failed due to "technical and weather-related problems." Now, at the age of 64, Fournier is set to try again. If everything goes right, his speed will approach 1,000 miles per hour during the early stages of his 15-minute descent. Quoting the NYTimes: "Fournier faces plenty of perils. Above 40,000 feet, there is not enough oxygen to breathe in the frigid air. He could experience a fatal embolism. And 12 miles up, should his protective systems fail, his blood could begin to boil because of the air pressure, said Henri Marotte, a professor of physiology at the University of Paris and a member of Fournier's team. 'If the human body were exposed at very high altitude, the loss of consciousness is very fast, in five seconds,' Marotte said. 'Brain damage, in three or four minutes.'"

Re:Yet another thing...

[DreadPiratePizz]

I for one think that it is an interesting idea if they can reliably pull it off.

Something like this will never be reliably pulled off. The challenges in reaching that altitude are immense, the skydive itself very dangerous, and the costs prohibitive. Many people have been trying to break Joseph Kittinger's 102,800 jump since he did it, and nobody has succeeded. That was in 1960. Everybody who's tried has either died, or postponed their plans due to danger.

Re-entry

[EdZ]

From the second page of TFA:

"I can't think of a bigger stunt, other than perhaps trying to re-enter the earth's atmosphere with just your body, and I think we're a long way away from that."

It sounds pretty feasible to me. Assuming the jump is from above the atmosphere but not from orbit, the re-entry heating is fairly small (SpaceShipOne had little to no heat-shielding). Given a spacesuit and some sort of partially-rigid insulating blanket (like the old 'astronaut's inflatable lifeboat' idea), it's probably only a matter of time until someone jumps out of a suborbital craft.

Re:More savings for NASA

[dpilot]

In "Mission to the Stars", written by A.E. van Vogt between 1943 and 1952, Peter Maltby did pretty much just this. I believe I've read other depictions of "personal reentry" written later with more realistic and practical detail, as well.

Bruno Gouvy...

[dargaud]

Extreme snowboarder Bruno Gouvy [youtube.com] had planned to do this 15 years ago before he fell off La Verte. His plan was a bit different: instead of jumping from very high up and use the lower pressure to gather more speed, he wanted to jump holding to a one-ton bullet...

I'm still curious as to whether this was doable or not. It would still take at least 4500 meters of free fall to go to Mach one... And letting go of the handles must be a bitch of a slap in the face!