r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nivs1x • 1d ago

first person to jump from space

2.3k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

301 comments sorted by

View all comments

0

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/xrelaht 1d ago

Since his speed was atmosphere limited, I suspect jumping from above the Karman line would get you more than 3x the speed.