42 May/June 2022
SKYDIVES:
COMPARED
See how the
journeys of
these high-
flying daredevils
stack up.
Joe Kittinger
August 16, 1960
Altitude / 102,800 feet
Freefall Speed: 614 mph
Time in Freefall / 4 minutes
36 seconds
Suit Features / U.S. Air Force
partial pressure suit designed
for high-altitudes. Includes
inflating tubes to prevent
ebullism, which is similar to
decompression sickness.Felix Baumgartner
October 14, 2012
Altitude / 127,852 feet
Freefall Speed / 843.6 mph
Time in Freefall / 4 minutes 19
seconds
Suit Features / Developed by
experts at David Clark Company,
the fully pressurized, four-layer
suit included an inflatable bladder
specially fitted to his body to help
maintain bloodflow.Alan Eustace
October 24, 2014
Altitude / 135,899 feet
Freefall Speed / 822 mph
Time in Freefall / 4 minutes 27 seconds
Suit Features / Eustace’s fully
pressurized suit, designed by Paragon
Space Development Corporation,
United Parachute Technologies, and
NASA’s space suit supplier, ILC Dover,
included a full life-support system
comparable to that of an astronaut.Space
10GETTY^ IMAGES^ (KITTINGER);COURTESYRED^ BULL^ (BAUMGARTNER);COURTESYATOMIC^ENTERTAINMENTGROUP^ (EUSTACE)tumble out of control—something that could cause
them to pass out or that could tear off an arm or leg.
Test-dummy experiments conducted before Eus-
tace’s f light revealed that a diver could enter a f lat
spin of 180 revolutions per minute.
“If you start spinning really fast, then it’s like if
you were inside a blender,” Dr. Emmanuel Urquieta
Ordonez, an assistant professor at Baylor Univer-
sity’s Department of Emergency Medicine and
Center for Space Medicine in Houston, says. “The
blood that normally needs to go to your brain to
keep you awake and conscious will start going to
your legs, and then you could technically pass out.”
(Eustace used a drogue parachute to help stabilize
his descent, but this method could become less reli-
able at higher altitudes.)
Maintaining pressure and temperature are
the most important requirements of a suit like
this, Urquieta Ordonez says. Above 62,000 feet,
“either you need 100 percent oxygen, or you need
to increase the pressure of the suit for the lungs to
be able to move the oxygen into your veins,” he says.
Above 60,000 to 62,000 feet, a demarcation known
as the Armstrong limit, “any f luids—even saliva—
will boil because there’s no atmospheric pressure to
keep it in a liquid state,” he explains. The tempera-
tures at these altitudes could be fatal, too.
The life-support systems within the suit—a
clean supply of oxygen, a CO2 scrubber, water
and cooling systems, for instance—would need to
accommodate what could be an hours-long journey,
depending on how high the diver jumps from. And
there would likely need to be some sort of redun-
dancy, meaning if one part of the life-support
system failed, a backup would kick in.THE RISKS OF REENTRY
Atmospheric reentry adds another layer of com-
plexity. A space diver’s suit would need to withstand
temperatures as high as 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Seedhouse says the options include either ablative
materials, like those that burned off of the Apollo
command module, or a tile system like the one used
during the shuttle program. Altogether, Seedhouse
estimates a suit replete with a propulsion system,
a fully redundant life-support system, and heat
shield could weigh as much as 500 pounds.
So, when will it be time to jump? The space
tourism industry seems to be on the cusp of a
major boom. Last year, SpaceX sent an all-private
crew of astronauts to orbit and both Jeff Bezos’s
Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galac-
tic safely launched crews of private astronauts on
suborbital f lights. A slew of private space missions
(orbital and suborbital) are planned for next year.
Still, Seedhouse says it will be a while before even
the ultrawealthy can hurl themselves out of space-
craft and safely dive back to Earth.