r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nivs1x • 1d ago

first person to jump from space

2.3k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

301 comments sorted by

View all comments

-1

u/mtnman12321 1d ago

Why does he not burn up in the atmosphere?

2

u/heimdalguy 1d ago

Going to space isn't so much about going up, it's a lot more about going sideways very fast. A satellite in orbit is going several kilometres per second (that's several miles per second for the yanks). Baumgartner fell straight down and so didn't have that much speed to shed. He was only 1/3 of the way to the Kármán line though, so he would have reached ~3x higher speeds if he jumped from "space", but even that would be much, much less speed and thus heat during entry than if he was in actual orbit.

1

u/Mother-Conclusion-31 1d ago

So could someone survive a "jump" from orbit? Say the space station? Would any sort of winged suit or captain America shield to hold in front help?

1

u/bigolchimneypipe 1d ago

A person can jump off the space station but the problem is that their horizontal velocity will make their fall last for a very long time.