Red Bull Stratos is a mission to make the highest free-fall jump in history. Felix Baumgartner will jump from 120,000-feet (22.7 miles) above the earth and it will be captured from a variety of angles.
To make this happen some of the cameras are modified to deal with the extreme cold and some are encased in nitrogen-filled housings. Among the gear featured in the above BTS video are several RED One cameras, Canon 5D Mark IIs, Canon EF-S 10-22mm lenses (mounted on the RED One’s) and Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lenses (mounted on the 5D2’s).
Canon is finally getting a trip to space in spite of NASA’s long history with Nikon.
[via PetaPixel]
Maybe I haven’t read enough about this nearly 23-mile jump to understand the rationale behind the project. I note that the older guy who jumped (at a much younger age) from a balloon-lifted gondola at 103,000 feet did not offer a rationale for his jump, much less the looming enterprise. He did speak about documenting the fall by Felix Baumgartner using three cameras so we will know what it must have felt like. I doubt strongly that pure video will do the event justice. It seems to me that a well-secured 150-pound sack of potatoes appointed with three highly specialized Canon cameras could bring us the experience of free fall as well as a human being. Call it the “Spud Meteor.” Otherwise this event should be labeled as an advertisement and experiment in cinematography.
Kittenger was testing the latest iteration of the new space suit. He noticed a leak in the left hand. The leak caused blood to collect in that hand which “ballooned” it up to the point that it was useless. As he was nearly at altitude he declined to mention it and jumped anyway. As I recall it took seven minutes to reach the ground (White Sands, NM). His speed peaked at 713mph just before he reached the Tropopause and slowed down to around 100mph before the main chute deployed.
So are you suggesting that this is an extreme exercise to test the structural integrity of a new generation space suit? Remember that Felix Baumgartner may be approaching the speed of sound during free-fall and then he’s slowed by parachutes to less than 100 mph. I can see that happening if the governemrt and private industry develop rockets which can carry astronauts and civilians into space of close to it. Manufacturing and testing such a
Thanks Len. So are you suggesting that this is an extreme exercise to test the structural integrity of a new generation space suit? Remember that Felix Baumgartner may be approaching the speed of sound during free-fall and then he’s slowed by parachutes to survivable speeds for touch down. I can see that happening if the government and private industry develop rockets which can carry astronauts and civilians into space or close to it. There may be a need to bail out in case of emergency.