If all goes according to plan, Michel Fournier will complete a two decade and $20 million long journey today to balloon into the upper reaches of the atmosphere and then skydive back down in what he’s calling Le Grad Saut, or, The Great Leap.
His leap begins on the ground, where he will load into a 10 foot tall pressurized gondola that will hang from the bottom of a 650-foot balloon. This balloon will take him to a height of 130,000 feet (25 miles) over the course of two-hours, at which point he will open the door and step into the blackness of space.
To survive the fall, which will last for a full 15 minutes, he’s going to be wearing a special space suit and a parachute that is designed to automatically deploy when he’s 5,000 feet above the ground.
Along the way, he will reach, and then cross the speed of sound. (And then top out at a speed of around 1,000 MPH) If that sounds crazy, it is. Scientists are still unsure of what will happen when a person crosses the sound barrier unaided.
With those speeds, Fournier will also be breaking four new records: fastest free fall, longest free fall, highest altitude for a human balloon flight and highest parachute jump.
So what are the potential risks?
If his suit fails, the pressure would cause his blood could boil, and he would loose consciousness in less than five seconds. (Which sounds like a blessing if your blood is boiling during those five seconds!)
His first try was yesterday, and was canceled due to weather related complications, so let’s hope that today provides Michel with smoother sailing, and that he finds his way back to Earth in one piece!
[Via: The New York Times]
If you’re looking to get into motorsports without getting into a second mortgage, then check out Motive’s feature called, Cheap Thrills: A Poor Man’s Guide To Getting Started In Amateur Motorsprots.
The goal is to get you going without getting you in debt, and out of the stands and into a race car, even if that car isn’t going to set land speed records any time soon.
The goals are simple: Allow you to use your regular car, require little more than a racing helmet and driving gloves, and let you enjoy the thrill or racing.
Sports covered include Drag Racing, Autocross, Time Trials, and High-Performance Driving Events with a breakdown of cost, speed, time, wear, and risk.
Are you ready to buckle up and drive?
[Motive - Cheap Thrills]
Lenore Skenazy of The New York Sun left her 9-year-old son at Bloomingdale’s with “a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.”
Several hours later…he turned up at home, safe and sound.
Surprised?
Half the people she told that story to were, but for what reason? Have we come to distrust our fellow man so much that we feel the need to keep children under lock and key so that they have no chance to foster any type of independence? I think we have, and Lenore would agree.
The problem is not that we aren’t aware of the risks, and haven’t heard stories of what can happen, it’s that “we all know that story — and the one about the Mormon girl in Utah and the one about the little girl in Spain — and because we do, we all run those tapes in our heads when we think of leaving our kids on their own.”
Except, instead of making them safer, locking them up just makes them dependent and afraid of the world.
The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you can’t protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning.
So perhaps it’s time for everyone to just relax a little bit, trust a little bit, and give a little bit, because otherwise, what kind of world have we created for ourselves?
[The New York Sun - Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride The Subway Alone]
Canouflage is probably one of the best (and funniest) ideas I’ve ever seen: Simply wrap your beer in a vinyl cover that looks like a popular soda brand, and then chug away at what appears to be a harmless 12 ouncer to the outside world.
Available “flavors” include Skunkpiss, Risk, Peski, and Mountain Spew, and they come in packs of four that are also reusable in case the thirty pack that you bought is going to need some extra hiding.
[Via: Random Good Stuff]
