On August 16, 1960, at 7:12 a.m., United States Air Force Captain Joseph W. Kittinger Jr. looked out from his balloon gondola at a height of over 19 miles and… jumped. Kittinger’s altitude and free-fall speed record lasted until Felix Baumgartner’s jump from a height of nearly 24 miles on Oct. 14, 2012. Baumgartner broke several records, including for vertical speed, where he was the first human to break the sound barrier without assisted power.
References
1.
J. W.
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“
Red Bull Stratos: Final Statistics
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Readers can view the appendix online at https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5098912 under the Supplemental tab.
9.
“
The Barometric Formula
,” Hyperphysics
, http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Kinetic/barfor.html.10.
Milton
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A number of approximations can be found in Ref. 9 as well as at “
Exponential Integral
,” Wikipedia
, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_integral.12.
United States Parachute Association
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U.S. Standard Atmosphere 1976 (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and United States Air Force, 1976), p. 62.
14.
Keisan Online Calculator, http://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1180573423.
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2019
American Association of Physics Teachers
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