Skydiver breaks sound barrier over New Mexico in highest jump ever

Jack Billings
Published October 15, 2012
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/skydiver-breaks-sound-barrier-over-new-mexico-in-highest-jump-ever-657631/
From post-gazette.com
Author: Juan Carlos Llorca
Published: October 15, 2012

Summery:
               Daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner made history when he broke the sound barrier for the first time in the highest sky dive ever. Baumgartner is a 43-year-old former Austrian paratrooper with more than 2,5000 jumps who, on Sunday October 2nd, took off in a capsule carried by a 55-story ultra-thin helium balloon to break the sound barrier. He jumped from over 24 miles up and hit Mach 1.24, or 833.9 miles per hour- becoming the first man to reach supersonic speed in free-fall. At 128,100 feet above the Earth, Baumgartner jumped out of the capsule not into the atmosphere, but into the stratosphere. Because of the extreme conditions of this altitude, he had to wear a pressurized suit for protection. Coincidentally, his feat came on the 65th anniversary of the day the sound barrier was first broken by a jet. In order to get the funding for this highly expensive expedition  he was sponsored by Red Bull but also NASA, who is eager to improve their blueprints for future spacesuits. This jump broke the record for the fastest free-fall, the highest manned-balloon flight and the jump from the highest altitude but Baumgartner did not break the longest free-fall record (held by Joe Kittinger- who was on the team that made this jump possible).

Connection:
               This article connects to biology because the conditions which Baumgartner faced at over 24 miles up demanded that he wear a special space suit for protection. Without this pressurized spacesuit (which weighed 100 pounds), Baumgartner never would have been able to survive the temperatures at 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit or lower and the atmosphere was so thin that his blood would have vaporized without sufficient protection (not to mention that he would have suffocated without the oxygen provided by his helmet). Any contact with the capsule on his assent could have torn his suit and a rip could have exposed him to a lack of oxygen and the extreme temperatures as well as the atmosphere which would have caused lethal nitrogen bubbles to form in his bodily fluids. Luckily, there was no tear in the suit and so he was able to survive the jump and was protected from the explosive noise he made as he broke the sound barrier and the rush of air as he jumper out of the capsule.