On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 12:47 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for your informative post. I've been looking at Bear info for > weeks and will now look at Sable.
A stated before, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. We try to post enough information on the website, but we can't get it all up there... there's also the balloon sked reflector that has most of the near space groups represented. Lots of people there with thousands of hours of experience. > Le Grand Saut... What can I say? My $17 weekend skydives are to > Fournier's planned epic jump as a pebble is to Mt. Everest. Nick > Piantenides died trying a similar balloon freefall record. It is > fraught with peril and ENORMOUS expense. I wish Michel the very best > and am in awe not only of his courage but the huge personal sacrifices > he has made to make the jump happen. Your $17 weekend skydives are many magnitudes cheaper than Michel's jump! I've done just over 30 jumps myself, and would gladly take up the sport again. Something about work and life getting in the way though. I never did get a hop and pop in there... I did take an HT up with me on my third jump, and talked with my buddies back in Edmonton. My instructor never knew I was taking the radio... something about me supposedly keeping my mind on flying the canopy or something... > My upper limit is 24,000 feet. I've made two HALO jumps from that > altitude. Why 24,000? I conferred with a USAF flight surgeon who > worked with a Pararescue squadron that did special ops HALO and HAHO > jumps. He said an O2 equipment failure at or below 24,000 feet won't > kill you. Above that and your chances of injury or death climb rapidly > with extra altitude. Yes, very true... Low altitude jumps are survivable if you have equipment failures. You need to invest a lot of time and money to ensure that you survive the ride up to and the drop down from 130,000 feet. Watching the HD video that we took from 117,000 feet however makes me extremely envious of Michel. I can almost imagine myself taking the step out of the gondola. I don't think it would take much convincing to get me to swap places with Michel. What an experience. > Fournier is so far into the danger zone that death is certain if he > has a serious failure in his life support systems. I wouldnt dream of > taking the risks he will take. Godspeed to him. Nah, not Godspeed... just Mach 1 or slightly better! There's a lot of work going into the life support systems, and tracking and recovery of Michel are priority #1. There's a doctor on board the chase and recovery helicopter. They'll have first crack at getting to Michel if something were to go wrong. I think there's a 2 minute window between Michel landing, and medical help arriving. Outside of that, chances of survival are pretty slim if something should go wrong. Tracking and recovery of the gondola, and also tracking and recovery of the balloon are further down the priority list. We need to track and recover both, but only after Michel is safe. 1 ton of plastic makes a pretty big mess, and it can't be left laying in a field. the gondola as well is a pretty big bit of trash to leave laying around. James VE6SRV
