Dear students of the mechanics with applications
course...
this is a very special exercise, very, very special
- The following passages are excerpts from "The Long, Lonely Leap" by Captain Joseph W. Kittinger Jr. USAF as they appeared in National Geographic magazine. It is the story of his record-setting, high altitude parachute jump from a helium balloon over New Mexico on 16 August 1960.
An hour and thirty-one minutes after launch, my pressure altimeter halts at 103,300 feet. At ground control the radar altimeters also have stopped on readings of 102,800 feet, the figure that we later agree upon as the more reliable. It is 7 o'clock in the morning, and I have reached float altitude.
At zero count I step into space. No wind whistles or billows my clothing. I have absolutely no sensation of the increasing speed with which I fall.
Though my stabilization chute opens at 96,000 feet, I accelerate for 6,000 feet more before hitting a peak of 614 miles an hour, nine-tenths the speed of sound at my altitude. An Air Force camera on the gondola took this photograph when the cotton clouds still lay 80,000 feet below. At 21,000 feet they rushed up so chillingly that I had to remind myself they were vapor and not solid. Joseph Kittinger, 1960
Verify the speed claim of the author. (At this altitude g = 9.72 m/s2.)
2
Send this special exercise tomorrow, March 28,
no later than 11:59 p.m., following the usual instructions.
A fraternal hug (I miss all of you)
postscriptum: please write in English
