Red Bull Stratos Mission

Camille Li Morales 

Ordinary people interact with Physics in unimaginable occasions, whenever you turn on the light, use your reading glasses or even when you hear your MP3 player, but some people interact with Physics in a completely different level, for example when planning to break the speed of sound. The goal of “Red Bull Stratos Mission” scientists was to break the sound barrier by aiding Felix Baumgartner in a supersonic skydiving freefall from the stratosphere all the way down to the troposphere. 

In 2005 the company Red Bull and professional skydiver Felix Baumgartner decided to begin laying the groundwork for a stratospheric freefall that would expand all the existent records of human flight. During the period of seven long years they planned and executed this amazing mission. Felix started his training and learned everything about high altitude pressurized suits. This event is so mind blowing and important that David Clark Company agrees for the first time in history to produce a pressure suit for a non-governmental space program. These suits are a key piece of the mission because unprotected exposure to the stratosphere would be life threatening for any human, at that altitude the amount of breathable air molecules is very low.

The speed of sound is the distance travelled during a unit of time by a sound wave propagating through an elastic medium. In dry air at 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound is 343.2 meters per second (1,126 ft/s). This is approximately one mile in five seconds. The speed of an object (in distance per time) divided by the speed of sound in the fluid is called the Mach number. Objects moving at speeds greater than Mach1 are traveling at supersonic speeds. Breaking the speed of sound means reaching and surpassing the speed at which sound waves are produced in air. The records indicate that in October 14, 2012 in a time frame of 9:09 minutes, Felix traveled approximately at Mach1.24 with a speed of 833miles per hour or 372.38 meters per second from an estimated 128,100 feet. This makes Felix Baumgartner the first man to break the speed of sound in a freefall!!! Of the 9:09 minutes Felix traveled a total of 4:22 minutes in freefall without the parachute. 

This mission just proves the amazing depths of the human mind. It is incredible how complex and complicated this project was, that it took seven years of planning and training for a ten minute journey across the atmosphere. The scientists had to monitor every little aspect of the mission meticulously because it was never done before. There were many hazards that had to be supervised for example, the below freezing temperatures, too little oxygen to breathe, low air pressure, among others.  In addition to breaking world records this mission will provide new data for researchers around the world that will help astronauts, engineers, physicists, etc. create new safety procedures for upcoming space projects. Incredibly Felix Baumgartner is an ordinary citizen who loves skydiving!!!!!