For all those of you interested in skydiving, if you haven’t heard already, we thought you would like to know that the world record has just been broken for the highest skydive ever to be made breaking the previous record set a couple of years ago.
On the 24th October, Alan Eustace, senior vice president with Google, took to the air in a giant balloon just before the sun rose wearing a spacesuit. He is a keen skydiver and has been a pilot for 25 years. He gradually ascended to a height of 135,890 feet -that is in excess of 25 miles above New Mexico taking in the region of two and a half hours to achieve this altitude. In fact, this ascent took place at around 1,000 feet a minute. The jump was made with the support of many including the Paragon Space Development Corporation.
Apparently, having got to that height, he then spent around half an hour admiring the stratosphere. He then took that important drop away from the balloon to start making his descent.
His free fall, that lasted for around 4.5 minutes, was so rapid that he was able to break the speed of sound within 90 seconds reaching a speed of greater than 1,300km/h as well as breaking Felix Baumgartner’s world altitude record set on 14th October 2012 that had stood at a height of 128,100 feet. A small drogue chute was able to keep him stable.
His free fall descent into the atmosphere that was thickening lasted for around five minutes. At about 18,000 feet his parachute was deployed and he completed the gentle drop to the ground. This took him in the region of 15 minutes to reach the ground with the aid of his parachute. When he did land, he ended up almost 70 miles from where his balloon had started off. A ground support team then returned him to from where he had launched safe and sound.
Our congratulations go out to Alan.
You must be logged in to post a comment.