Infinity rig will be used at an estimated 800 mph (1300 km/h) freefall.
Here, the Infinity rig manufacturer Kelly Farrington talks more about the rig design. He mentiones the drogue that is independent (but not neccessarily) from main or reserve parachute deployment system:
Mar 10, 2010, 1:05 PM
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In the 2nd video in which Kelly talks, it showed a guy in a pressure chamber and there was a bottle of water in the chamber with him....it looked like the water was boiling...is that accurate?
Mar 10, 2010, 1:18 PM
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Hi Bart!
Kelly is down in Florida for the Skydive Expo, so he wont be back until next week. As soon as he returns home, he'll be getting a "routine" full-body type cavity search / Manufacturing Facility Inspection / "Hi, I'm from the FAA and I'm here to help" type of visit... I'll be phoning in sick. (That wasn't very professional, now was it? )
Every few years, the FAA see's fit to inspect TSO holders. They make their rounds verifying that we continue to manufacture according to our QC system. They also have a knack for scheduling these visits at the most inconvenient times.
Anyway, in short, it may be a couple of weeks before Kelly see's this.
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Kelly - can you outline all the differences between a regular Infinity (like mine ), and the one that will be used by Felix?
This bit of info probably can't legally be released until after the jump.
Mar 11, 2010, 4:35 AM
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I'm not sure if I want to put ALL of the differences in print, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm free to discuss about the project, but the main differences you see are probably the pockets for the oxygen bottles on the sides of the rig, and some extra flaps on the reserve pin cover flap. I turned the pin cover into another container for the drogue pilot chute, and put a small container for the drogue at the top of the backpad. The footage of Felix in droguefall in that video isn't the rig or the drogue that we built. That's from earlier in the program, before we were brought on board. The jump is planned to be a true freefall, with no drogue- it's there incase stability or excess speed becomes an issue- therefore it does not act as a pilot chute for either canopy and gets released when either ripcord is pulled.
The handles are also in different locations, and shaped differently since Felix will have limited mobility and visibility when the suit is pressurized.
I don't think they have a firm date for the jump yet, as there are still plenty of things getting worked out for the project.
Mar 14, 2010, 12:12 PM
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Just curious what...:
1 ...type and size of main will be used? 2 ...type and size reserve? 3 ...type of AAD, and how many of them will be used?
I designed both the custom main and the reserve canopies specifically for this jump. The canopies were produced by Precision Aerodynamics in Dunlap TN and have been going through test jumps "at altitude" for some time now.
I won't get into the design details just yet, but that will come in time. Suffice it to say, these are not your normal everyday skydiving canopies.
Regarding AADs, that's not my sandbox, and I'm not sure of the details.
Jun 8, 2010, 6:26 AM
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i imagine there will be a high pucker factor on the cypres team. imagine a premature firing at 100,000+ feet! i wonder if there is a plan for this, or any situation that put the reserve out that high. i can't see felix taking enough oxygen to last for that long of a canopy ride.
Jun 8, 2010, 2:14 PM
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i imagine there will be a high pucker factor on the cypres team. imagine a premature firing at 100,000+ feet! i wonder if there is a plan for this, or any situation that put the reserve out that high. i can't see felix taking enough oxygen to last for that long of a canopy ride.
I'd put the Cypres on the main, or a reserve on a tersh that could be cut away, that way, if it fires too high, you can still chop it.
Jun 9, 2010, 7:56 AM
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The Cypres is going on the reserve, and there is a system in place to prevent Felix from running out of O2 if a premature deployment happens, and it's not "bigger bottles"
Jun 9, 2010, 11:06 AM
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The Cypres is going on the reserve, and there is a system in place to prevent Felix from running out of O2 if a premature deployment happens, and it's not "bigger bottles"
Rebreather?
I would think that you would reach pretty damn fast decent speed under canopy at that high an altitude. What would your vertical descent rate be under a canopy at 100,000 ft MSL?
Jun 10, 2010, 6:43 PM
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howdy ya'll,
long time lurker, first time poster [finally something in my lane].
so, at the altitudes discussed, water does indeed spontaneously boil. the amount of force keeping water in solution goes down as air pressure drops at altitude.
The boiling point eventually drops to 98.6 degrees F, and whammo....your blood boils. the medical term for this unfortunate condition is "ebullism".
The exact altitude at which it happens depends on barometric pressure and temperature, but in general we just say that it occurs around 63,000'. (called the "Armstrong Line")
Consequently, folks wishing to exit at that altitude need to be wearing some kind of pressure suit in order to prevent their inside parts from becoming their outside parts.
The world record jumper is Colonel Joseph Kittinger. I'm sure this isn't news to most of you, but in 1960 he jumped at 102,000'. (if you're not familiar with the story of his life, you should look into it. Not only is he credited with this heroic feat, he's also a combat pilot from Vietnam with two Silver Stars and a Prisoner of War Medal which he earned during his stay at the Hanoi Hilton)
Now, on to the "speed of sound" issue. The rate that sound travels depends on the medium that it's traveling through. In dry air, at room temperature it's 768mph. In water sound travels several times faster (~3300mph) and in a vacuum, sound doesn't travel at all.
If "Fearless Felix" is able to exit at 120,000 will he "break the sound barrier"? Well, maybe, but not in the traditional way we think of it. He'll continue to accelerate (at a rate less than the 9.8m/s/s that Newton's Apple fell) until he reaches a terminal velocity for given conditions. The force required to push his body through the sound barrier isn't linear and I suspect that as he approaches that limit he'll experience a spike in relative drag that will serve to buffer him from supersonic speeds. If I'm wrong, the transition into supersonic flight is likely to be very rough for him. I suspect he'll become extremely unstable at that point. Traditional flight positions would be very dangerous.
All-in-all, it's a fascinating project that I'd love to be working on. Very jealous!
Apr 5, 2012, 3:55 PM
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Who knows. I know PD has military reserve canopies that are designed to open for 10 (ten) seconds. Maybe it is similar in this case?
Yeah, not hard to have some sort of reefing system to slow down your openings, but not sure if its a good idea on your reserve if you also want it to open fast if necessary.
Apr 7, 2012, 4:53 AM
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Who knows. I know PD has military reserve canopies that are designed to open for 10 (ten) seconds. Maybe it is similar in this case?
Yeah, not hard to have some sort of reefing system to slow down your openings, but not sure if its a good idea on your reserve if you also want it to open fast if necessary.
Not a problem if you adjust your openning accordingly.
Apr 9, 2012, 7:57 AM
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I think the opening may be one of his worries...but assuming he survives that, what would he do with an open reserve at 100,000ft?
I'm sure he doesn't have enough oxygen to fly down from that altitude and hook knifing the reserve doesn't seem too smart.
Aside from that conundrum, would a reserve opening at 100,000 ft and 800kph necessarily be a concern due to the low air density? Would it not just remain a streamer, would the reserve even deploy?
Apr 9, 2012, 1:40 PM
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Aside from that conundrum, would a reserve opening at 100,000 ft and 800kph necessarily be a concern due to the low air density? Would it not just remain a streamer, would the reserve even deploy?
Well I guess he's depending on a drogue to inflate correctly if he needs it, so I guess the same physics would apply to his reserve.
Apr 9, 2012, 1:44 PM
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Reserve can be cutaway by pulling the break-away handle.
What is interesting, if you open the main first, you can cut it away and open your reserve. Then, the reserve can NOT be cutaway.
If you open reserve first, it CAN be cut away, and then you can open the main. Then, the main can NOT be cutaway.
Basically, you cannot cutaway your LAST canopy ("cutaway inhibitor system").
Drogue will deploy if Felix reaches the spin of 3Gs for more than 5 seconds.
Main or reserve can be open with or without the drogue out.
Cypres releases the drogue and opens the reserve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SErtpdKLsM4
Way to go INFINITY!!!
OK, that looks like a good system. I wonder (I assume so) if they've figured out what sort of opening shock he would be subjected to if he did have an accidental opening at altitude.
At 800 mph I wouldn't expect him to be too healthy after such an event..
Apr 9, 2012, 4:05 PM
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OK, that looks like a good system. I wonder (I assume so) if they've figured out what sort of opening shock he would be subjected to if he did have an accidental opening at altitude.
At 800 mph I wouldn't expect him to be too healthy after such an event..
I would think the thinner or lack of air would soften the shock a bit.
Apr 9, 2012, 8:32 PM
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Normally, round parachutes open harder at high altitude. Say, three to four times as hard at 40,000' than low altitude. [Reference: Knacke] It might not work quite the same with reefed ram air parachutes; it might be not quite so bad.
Still I can say:
At high altitude a jumper will take longer to get to the local terminal velocity. (One outside analysis of the planned Red Bull jump suggested 45 seconds to the peak speed.) But once at it, the dynamic pressure at say 800 mph is going to be the same as when the jumper is doing 120 mph or whatever near sea level.
So that's 6.7 times as much actual speed, and thus by squaring it, 44 times as much actual kinetic energy to deal with. (Well, one isn't slowing to a canopy descent rate of zero, certainly at high altitude, but we're just looking at rough numbers here.)
Whether all that energy matters depends on how fast the parachute opens -- it would be no problem only if the canopy takes a lot longer to open, with a long long snivel. On a regular skydive, if a canopy inflates fully in a very short time, the G forces get excessive when at terminal. Don't go slider off at terminal velocity. Deceleration loads are only acceptable when the full inflation starts at lower speed. So normally we need that reefing from the slider so the partially open parachute slows us somewhat before it snaps fully open.
To reiterate, the wind pressure felt on a high altitude jump at high altitude terminal will be like 120 mph down low -- so there's plenty of force trying to open the canopy.
The part of the deployment process where the canopy fills with air is less of a factor for squares than rounds, but in any case that inflation is affected more by the volume of air (even though it is very thin air), than the density. So the tendency, at high speed & altitude, is for much more rapid canopy filling, because there's a lot more cubic feet of air going by every second.
Thus overall you still have plenty of wind pressure like usual, tons more energy, and faster canopy filling. This sounds like it should lead to much harder openings. Unless the slider somehow guaranteed a really long snivel in some manner I don't understand, a high altitude, high airspeed opening would be extremely hard.
), and the one that will be used by Felix? 
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