Update (19:31 BST) After a morning of push backs, Felix Baumgartner's ascent has been aborted due to gusty winds at the New Mexico launch site. The balloon carrying his capsule had been set for liftoff at 11.15 am local time, and preparations for the launch had already begun. "I am strapped into the capsule, and I am ready to go," Baumgartner told in mission control just moments before the launch was aborted. The Red Bull Stratos team said the jump will not happen today, and it will announce a new timetable soon.
Original story, posted earlier on 9 October 2012
When Felix Baumgartner jumps from his balloon, 36 kilometres above the Earth, he should become the first human to break the sound barrier unaided.
As he does so, the Red Bull Stratos mission team will be recording his ECG, heart rate, respiratory rate, as well as skin and core body temperature ? data that will capture the effects of supersonic acceleration and deceleration on the human body.
Accelerometers will log Baumgartner's orientation and spin rate. GPS will track his position in space, and high-definition cameras will pipe the whole event live.
The scientific value of all this, the team says, is to point the way for future human spacefarers. Baumgartner's jump will aid in "developing escape systems for the space tourists of the future, as well as for the pilots and astronauts who already need suborbital systems today," the mission website says.
"Any time you push an envelope, in this case, a leap almost from space, you always learn something new," says Harley Thronson of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Artificial aid
However, Thronson points out that while the Red Bull team likes to highlight the importance of the physiological data it will capture as Baumgartner falls to Earth "without mechanical assistance", the suit he'll be wearing represents a significant amount of artificial aid.
"It's quite a suit," Thronson says. "I suspect there will not be a discovery that have a direct benefit to human space flight."
Whether the Stratos project delivers groundbreaking insights or not, the fact that it is being attempted suggests that space is getting busy. On Sunday, SpaceX launched the first of 12 missions, contracted by NASA, to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). Other space companies are waiting in the wings: Virgin Galactic plans to sling passengers into a zero-g parabola, and Bigelow Aerospace wants to build inflatable, manned space stations right next to the ISS. Even the US Federal Aviation Authority is on board. It said in a 2010 report that space tourism could become a multibillion dollar industry within 20 years.
This will mean more humans in space than ever before, and without the heft of a government space agency behind them. Bailing commercial passengers out into the thin, cold stratosphere might not be the ideal outcome for next-generation space companies in case of emergency, but if it comes to it, they will have Felix Baumgartner's data trail to follow.
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