I was just scrolling through another sub and the Felix Baumgartner jump came up, along with someone mentioning that the record was broken by Alan Eustace in 2014.
In the Wiki for this, it mentions he was falling at 822mph, however I thought a human’s terminal velocity was 120mph (more if say, a skydiver was diving head first)… So how does this work? Is it as a result of the reduced air resistance and force of gravity increased therefore increasing the terminal velocity?
Sorry, by no means a physicist!
In: Physics
Drag, and therefore terminal velocity, depends on air density, and air is less dense at very high altitudes. Because most of the air is below you, its weight isn’t compressing the air around you.
Gravity is also weaker at high altitudes, but not that much weaker.
Reduced air resistance due to there being little air where they started their jumps. Once they hit the bulk of the atmosphere they would have slowed down, but for a while there they were just accelerating without bounds.
Ex skydiver here. Assuming a constant weight, it’s all about how many molecules of air are being allowed to hit your body.
I can fall anywhere between 110mph to 268mph, according to my digital altimeter. It depends mainly on how much air I allow to hit my body whether I speed up or slow down in freefall.
The higher you go, the fewer molecules of air exist, so even if you let them all hit you, their combined mass will not slow you down. The lower you get, the more air is there and it gets harder to go fast.
Terminal velocity is determined by air density. When we say a human’s, or anything’s, terminal velocity is X what we really mean is in the lower layers of the atmosphere, so for things like jumping off of a building or a plane, this number generally holds true. But Eustace’s and Baumgartner’s jumps were from much higher up in the stratosphere where the air is very thin, so they could accelerate to a much higher speed before they started being decelerated by the atmosphere as they were coming into thicker air.
This is pretty straight forward. He fell quite a while in vacuum or near vacuum. Since it’s air resistance that dictates terminal velocity, he was able to fall much faster than this for a time before entering the atmosphere
dude that’s wild. the reason he fell so fast is because he started from way higher than regular skydives. up there the air is thinner so less drag. so he could keep accelerating till he hit that crazy speed. kinda like how a rock thrown off a cliff goes faster than just dropping a pencil 10 feet. super cool science stuff
Terminal Velocity varies with the surrounding air density. Denser air = slower T.V., and vice versa.
And air gets less dense as you go from the Earth up towards space.
Meaning that at great heights within the atmosphere, the T.V. will be much faster.
Gravity changes/variables in this situation are negligible.
so like terminal velocity is how fast you go when air pushes back as hard as gravity pulls you down. eustace jumped from way higher than most skydives so he fell through thinner air at first and built up more speed before air resistance kicked in. kinda wild how science works right.
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