From Sky Diving to Space Diving, we have seen people jumping out of planes with a parachutes and we say that is “extreme“, but this time we have pushed that word a lot further. Imagine instead of a plane try jumping out an space craft and diving into earth’s atmosphere at speeds that will break the sound barrier which i believe we call “entry” and land safely on earth.
Sounds too good to be true!!! ….. Believe it or not……
Technology
A futuristic space-suit being developed will take the high altitude adventurer of tomorrow from the total vacuum of outer space, through the searing heat of atmospheric reentry, then down to the surface of the planet earth for a pinpoint landing.
Solar System Express, a Baltimore based space firm and Juxtopia, a bio-medical design firm, have been working together to combine their space tech and bio-medical knowledge with the hope of releasing a production model of the suit The RL MARK VI by 2016.
The suit will be able to withstand extreme temperatures and pressure changes and help the diver deal with the lack of oxygen.
An Augmented reality heads-up display will show the wearer his or her vital signs as well as the technical details related to the outside conditions. Rocket boosters in the boots will help stabilize the person’s descent.
The initial tests, set to begin sometime in 2016, will be conducted with a robot, not a human, wearing the suit. There are so many things that can go wrong on a space dive that the inventors have a huge task ahead of them just to create a viable prototype, since it will eventually be used to perform sub-orbital and orbital space dives.
Until then, we’ll just have to watch the scene from the 2009 Star Trek movie where Kirk, Sulu and Olson do an awesome space dive using similar high-tech suits.
INSPIRATION
This was only possible by Felix Baumgartner who is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper. He set the world record for skydiving an estimated 39 kilometers (24 mi), reaching an estimated speed of 1357.64 km/h (843.6 mph), or Mach 1.25 on 14th October 2012, and became the first person to break the sound barrier without vehicular power on his descent.
Felix Baumgartner free-fall from the edge of space with New World Record
