The Science of Space Dive - Learning Zone

On Sunday 14th of October 2012...

'Mission Control. Perfect conditions for launch.'

..the world watched as Felix Baumgartner

climbed aboard a space capsule and flew a balloon 39km above the Earth.

'We are away, Felix is away.'

At 128,000ft, he left the capsule,

stood on a tiny step...

..and jumped.

He became the first person

to freefall faster than the speed of sound.

This incredible achievement took skill,

bravery and cutting edge science.

It took a team of engineers

and doctors four years to prepare Felix for the task.

Sometimes feels like...I can't do it, it's just too much.

They had to build the biggest balloon ever made for manned

flight and battle the weather just to get it off the ground.

They had to engineer a pressurised capsule to protect

Felix from the deadly environment at 128,000ft.

I call this a plumbing diagram. We're space plumbers!

Felix had to survive in a place where low pressure

and lack of oxygen could kill him in an instant.

They had to design next generation pressure suit that Felix

could skydive in.

It's a piece of art.

They had to study flight aerodynamics

and overcome the dangers of a supersonic spin.

He's spinning, isn't he?

But Felix had to break a record that was set over 50 years ago,

by this man, Colonel Joe Kittinger.

In 1960, nine years before man first stepped on the moon, Joe took

one of the first journeys to the very edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

His mission was to lay the foundations for space travel.

And to see if a pilot could survive a bailout at extreme altitude.

At just over 100,000ft, Joe leapt from his balloon.

I took a deep breath...

I said, "Lord, take care of me now."

The data from his jump helped develop a parachute escape system

still used by high altitude pilots today.

Joe came out of retirement to help Felix break his own record.

Together, they pushed the boundaries of science to get Felix

safely through the sound barrier and into the record books.

Felix, we're so proud of you. You did absolutely fabulous!

Absolutely fabulous! I couldn't have done any better myself.

Felix Baumgartner's mission depends entirely on one of the least

heralded but most remarkable pieces of equipment - a balloon.

It's the oldest flying machine of them all.

People have been flying balloons for over 200 years.

But this one sets a new standard.

It's the biggest ever designed for a manned flight

and it means Felix will enter the record books even before he jumps.

So Felix is going to set another record that we really don't

think about, which is the largest manned balloon ever flown.

The balloon built for Felix will hold 30 million cubic feet of gas.

Although it's incredibly thin,

it's designed to carry a capsule the weight of a car 39km up.

It will be filled with helium

until it's as tall as a 50 storey building.

It's amazing that this piece of plastic that is no thicker

than a dry cleaner bag that's going to hold up all this weight.

There's a series of nylon strings that run through that balloon

material to be able to carry the weight.

As the balloon climbs, the helium expands

until it is the width of a football field.

On launch, the balloon is teardrop shaped, but as it goes up

into the atmosphere, you're going into a near vacuum, that gas bubble

is expanding, so now the balloon ends up in almost a circular size.

When the atmosphere outside the balloon thins to the point

where its density equals that of the gas inside the balloon,

it can no longer climb.

Felix will have reached the end of his epic balloon journey.

At least, that's the theory.

The problem is the balloon is very difficult to launch.

The team sends up weather balloons called pie-balls to measure

wind speeds.

Felix's balloon is so big it needs near perfect calm to inflate.

Not just at ground level, but all the way up its height.

Only when the pie-balls are perfectly aligned is it safe

to begin the launch.

But on the team's first attempt, wind speeds changed suddenly,

with disastrous results.

Felix, The winds came up.

-We'll have to abort.

-No way.

The team had to wait for a second chance a few days later.

They used their reserve balloon and this time, conditions were perfect.

The launch was successful.

CHEERING

Felix set a new record for the highest ever manned balloon flight.

'Felix, you're on the way to space.'

'You're going up just great.'

Felix Baumgartner is making a journey to the edge of space.

His survival will rely on two crucial pieces of equipment -

his pressure suit and space capsule.

Each poses significant technical challenges.

The pressure suit is Felix's life support system as he ventures

to the very edge of the atmosphere.

To do its job, the suit needs to be rigid and strong.

Unfortunately, that makes it very difficult to skydive in.

So Felix has to undergo special training.

There are very few people that have jumped in pressure suits.

Of those four people who did that, two died.

And two lived.

Retired colonel Joe Kittinger was the first man to ever

jump in a pressure suit and Felix's suit is being made in the same

factory where Joe's was over 50 years ago.

You appreciate the suit a lot more if you see how it has been built.

Next time when I step into my suit, I'm going to take my time, you know?

Felix's pressure suit has been specially designed to give

more flexibility while still giving as much protection as a full

space suit.

It will keep him warm, safely pressurised

and supplied with oxygen.

There's actually four layers to this suit.

The outer cover that you see here is made out of Nomex,

which is a fire retardant material. The inner portion of the suit,

one of the things that we have is something we call link netting

and what link netting does is it retains the torsal shape of the body.

Inside the link netting, we actually have the bladder material.

Which is made out of Gore-Tex,

which actually vents the moisture out of the inside of the suit to

the atmosphere, but it maintains pressure.

The clever design and materials make Felix's suit a little easier

to skydive in than a traditional pressure suit.

But it's still highly restrictive.

Felix is used to skydiving in clothes that offer virtually

no restrictions on his movement,

so he needs to get used to freefalling in the pressure suit.

He begins training by jumping from 15,000ft.

On one jump, things go terribly wrong.

Felix has accidentally pulled the wrong cord,

cutting away his main parachute.

That's his parachute.

And now he can't find his reserve.

Just moments before it's too late, he finds it.

-We've got to go get him.

-We've got to go get him.

The restrictions of the suit caused him

to confuse his parachute handles.

The team are forced to redesign Felix's parachute rig to make

it easier for him to use with the suit.

I'm still alive!

Because the space suit is so restrictive,

the team don't want to inflate till they have to.

So Felix will travel to his jump height in a pressurised capsule,

only inflating the suit when he's about to jump.

Because the capsule will be travelling to the edge of space,

it has to be built to withstand low pressure and extreme cold.

The pressure capsule, the space capsule, what it does is

the atmosphere is held at 16,000ft,

so now his entire flight

throughout the three hour process is just as if he's flying at 16,000ft.

It's very low exposure and his suit now is not inflated,

so he has high mobility.

The team have chosen materials that expand and contract at similar

rates, so that the capsule remains pressure tight all the way up.

The pressure suit itself is a composite epoxy fibreglass.

The acrylic door, it's a 4ft diameter acrylic door,

it's half an inch thick.

Most materials will reduce in size because of the cold temperatures.

The fibreglass contracts at about the same rate as the acrylic,

so it's important to use fibreglass epoxy on the pressure suit.

Thanks to his pressurised capsule, Felix only had to rely

on his suit from the moment when the acrylic door swung

open and his body was exposed to the near vacuum of space.

Felix Baumgartner is attempting to break

the record for the longest, furthest and fastest freefall.

But before he even jumps,

he will have to survive a trip through a death zone, an environment

so inhospitable that it's impossible for any human to survive unaided.

Felix isn't the first person to attempt to break the skydive

record set by test pilot Joe Kittinger over 50 years ago.

Not long after Joe set the record, another man tried to break it.

But he wasn't as prepared for the hazards of high altitude flight.

Nick Piantanida was a 35-year-old skydiver who had

dreams of beating Joe's record.

Like Felix, Nick had no experience of working at extreme altitude.

Life support engineer Mike Todd, who is responsible for the equipment

that will help keep Felix alive, was also involved in Nick's attempt.

Nick was going at 125,000ft. We were supplying him with a parachute.

We didn't quite have the backing that was have on this project.

On the 1st of May 1966, Nick took off in his gondola.

A recording of his communication with Mission Control has survived.

Midway through his journey, something went terribly wrong.

He was probably up around 50,000 feet.

Some way or other, the visor was opened,

either accidentally or intentionally.

We really don't know.

The people on the ground immediately cut the balloon

away from the gondola, by the time they got to him they found him

outside of the gondola, with the visor partially open.

Nick was in a coma, caused by a condition known as hypoxia.

He died four months later.

We're talking about the medical

and physiological considerations of an extreme altitude jump.

Felix's medical team want him to understand the risks of hypoxia

and the other life-threatening conditions he will face at altitude.

The definition of hypoxia, it's a deficiency of oxygen.

These are the symptoms.

You may get impaired deficiency, drowsiness, poor judgement,

visual blurring, extreme fatigue, you're not really functional,

at that point.

The lack of oxygen in the thin atmosphere at high altitude

means Felix is at risk of hypoxia.

He will need to breathe from a canister throughout his mission.

If this equipment failed above 45,000 feet,

he would fall unconscious in under 15 seconds.

If something goes wrong, you're all by yourself. That is really scary.

This is what I'm thinking about all the time.

There is another danger Felix has to prepare for.

It is called decompression sickness, or the bends -

a condition also faced by divers.

Air contains both nitrogen and oxygen,

but nitrogen expands faster as pressure falls.

When a person travels quickly from a relatively high-pressure environment

to a relatively low-pressure environment,

the result can be fatal.

When you look at the bends as an example, when you're diving,

if you go down into the bottom of the pool, you blow a bubble,

that bubble is this big when you blow the bubble out,

by the time it reaches the top, it's this big.

So the nitrogen that's trapped in solution in your body, in your blood,

if you go up too quickly, that gas bubble is going to expand,

it is in your veins, in your tongue, in your head.

You get the bends.

Felix wears a space suit to protect against decompression sickness.

But he also takes one final precaution to reduce the risk

of nitrogen bubbling out of his blood at altitude.

For one hour before his flight, he breathes pure oxygen.

Oxygen pre-breathe is really important for this mission

because it washes out nitrogen.

So you breathe oxygen, wash out nitrogen,

and reduce the chance of decompression sickness.

But pre-breathing cannot protect Felix against the final

and most terrifying danger he faces on his balloon trip

to the edge of space - as Felix rises above 63,000 feet,

he passes through what is called the Armstrong Line.

Above this point, atmospheric pressure becomes so low,

all the gases in his body will try to escape.

It is a condition called ebullism.

The gas is trying to find the fastest path out of your body.

You will start to ooze from your eyes, start frothing at the mouth,

out of every orifice you have, you will start to ooze.

It's like the worst possible horror film.

On the day of Felix's record-breaking jump,

his pressure suit and oxygen supply worked perfectly.

All of the team's precautions and hard work paid off.

Felix got safely up to 128,000 feet.

Felix Baumgartner is attempting to freefall from 128,000 feet,

five times higher than the maximum altitude normally

attempted by skydivers jumping from a plane.

His team have to anticipate the extra risks

of falling from such an extreme height.

Their biggest fear is that, as Felix falls,

he could go into what is known as a flat spin.

What causes the flat spin is an odd position in freefall.

You have one extremity sticking out more than the other.

The faster you go, the more drag affects what you do.

If I have one arm off a little more than the other arm,

and I don't notice it, it could cause me to spin.

Felix is jumping into a near vacuum at the edge of the earth's atmosphere.

This means any changes in his body position could spell disaster.

Flat spin is a really serious concern.

In a vacuum, there is very little to stop motion.

The fear is that if Felix starts spinning at any kind of rate,

it could get to the point where he would not be able to control.

This is what happened to Felix's mentor, Joe Kittinger,

on one of his jumps over 50 years ago.

When I was freefalling, all of a sudden I had this violent rotation.

It was so violent I could not pull my arms in.

I couldn't do anything, I was just...paralysed.

Joe's camera captured just how violent this spin was.

I spun up 120 rpm, I was unconscious, I could have died.

There are two types of flat spin, both can be deadly.

If Felix spins with his head in the centre,

the G-force will pull the blood out of his brain, causing a blackout.

If his feet are at the centre,

then the blood will rush into his brain, causing what is

known as a red out, which could cause an aneurysm or brain damage.

Joe only survived his spin because his parachute fired automatically.

But Felix will be freefalling too fast for any

normal automatic parachute.

So his team throw themselves at the problem.

How do you stop a supersonic flat spin?

How much of a spin is too much for you to recover from?

Nobody really knows.

Was that fast enough that time?

When I'm spinning so fast that I can't bring my arms in,

that's too much of a spin.

That's my first take on it.

But I didn't know how much that was,

so I went skydiving and I tried different things,

and I took a G-meter up to see how much I spun, and what the effect was.

Luke tests lots of systems

but cannot find one that will cope with the G-force Felix will achieve.

Then he has a brainwave.

To borrow a technology used by the military to guide supersonic bombs.

It is called a drogue parachute.

We have a specially-designed drogue that can handle supersonic speeds.

We have attached at his shoulders rather

than in the middle of his back like a normal skydiver.

So I'm out of control, fire the drogue,

it grabs you and flips you the right side up.

Pretty amazing how well that works.

But there's still a problem.

If Felix is spinning so fast he cannot move his arms,

how can he pull the drogue?

Now I'm going to spin this thing around.

If he's spinning about this fast for six seconds,

we came up with a device that will automatically fire the drogue.

You will see the light come on and the drogue fires.

In Felix's record-breaking jump, he did go into a spin.

He's spinning, isn't he?

But he didn't spin long enough for his drogue to fire.

He managed to regain control and land safely.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

For Felix to skydive from higher than anyone has ever dared,

he must also do something no human has ever done -

freefall through the sound barrier.

In a computer animation, it looks straightforward enough,

but the reality is nobody knows if this is even possible.

We are putting Felix into a condition that really has never been done,

and has never been documented for sure.

So we don't know what happens to the body at the speed of sound.

Felix practices freefalling at an angle that gives him

the best chance of going supersonic quickly and safely.

It is called the Delta position.

Arms back, tilted forward, head down.

But first,

he'll have to break through what is known as the transonic wall.

This is the moment when some parts of Felix's body begin to go supersonic

while other parts are still subsonic.

These tiny differences in speed could cause violent vibrations.

What occurs is a pressure wave,

if you can imagine an air molecule suspended in the air,

and as this object is coming by, trying to reach the speed

of sound, these air molecules are crashing into each other,

they have to get out of the way, so it creates this pressure wave.

And as it goes out of the transonic phase,

you will find different areas going into supersonic at different times.

These different wave patterns create a convergence where the wave

shocks against each other, causing a buffeting.

In early supersonic jets, this caused extreme vibrations.

In Felix, these could damage his organs, and even kill him.

But none of these risks were enough to stop him

from making his record-breaking jump.

On October 14th 2012,

Felix Baumgartner became the fastest skydiver in history.

He went faster than a jumbo jet after 25 seconds.

Moments later, faster than a .45 calibre bullet.

After 35 seconds, he broke the sound barrier.

The speed of sound is affected by altitude and temperature.

Felix fell at temperatures of -45 degrees centigrade.

The cold air and the low pressure enabled him

to go supersonic at around 690 mph -

some 10 mph less than a normal air pressure at ground level.

As Felix fell back to Earth, the dense air in the

lower atmosphere acted as a drag on his body, slowing him down.

Felix's speed fell from supersonic to subsonic,

eventually reaching his maximum terminal velocity.

This meant he could no longer continue accelerating.

I'm feeling quite nauseous.

Yes!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd