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
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.
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