What If You Fell From Space?

What if you fell from space? Your altitude in feet and speed in mph, from 127,852 ft, higher than any jet has flown, past the sound barrier at 843 mph, all the way down to your own backyard. Past an airliner, Mount Everest's height, four skydivers and a cloud, in real time. You stand on the step of a capsule, 24 miles up, hands on the rails, your town somewhere under you. You let go. There's almost no air up here, so nothing slows you down and nothing lets you steer: you turn over, and you keep speeding up. Less than a minute later you're faster than sound, and you don't hear a thing. Then the air starts to push back, and you start to spin. You fight it flat, face down, and the air slows you. An airliner's trail far below, then the airliner itself, and you fall past it. Everest's height. Minus 40. You roll onto your back and see your balloon, a speck 19 miles up. A small plane, four skydivers, and you fall straight past them. Into a cloud, blind, and out under it. Pull. Then the quiet: nine cells of canopy over you, three thousand feet of air under your boots, and the whole town to fly over on the way home. A spiral over the high school field, the water tower under your left foot, the turn for home, your house, your backyard. Flare. Home. It's all in real time: four minutes and 24 seconds of free fall, then four minutes under your parachute, eight and a half minutes from the step to your lawn. The numbers are real. The 2012 record jump left its capsule at 127,852 ft (38,969 m) and reached 843.6 mph (1,357.6 km/h, Mach 1.25), the fastest anyone has ever fallen (FAI). The fall in the film uses that jump's drag in the US Standard Atmosphere (1976): it passes the speed of sound 34 seconds after you let go, near 110,000 ft, and reaches its top speed near 90,000 ft, as the real jump did. Up there the air is less than a 250th as thick as at home, and you can see over 400 miles in every direction. The highest a jet has flown is 123,523 ft (1977), weather balloons pop around 100,000 ft, a spy plane's record is 85,069 ft, and above 63,000 ft (the Armstrong limit) water in an open dish boils at body temperature, which is why you need a pressure suit. Airliners cruise near 35,000 ft, Mount Everest is 29,032 ft (2020 survey), and skydivers jump from about 13,500 ft and fall belly down at about 120 mph. Experienced skydivers must open by 2,500 ft (USPA); you open at 3,700 ft, just under the cloud. A ram-air canopy takes three to four seconds to open, at two to four g; a big, lightly loaded one sinks about 13 ft a second and flies forward about 20 mph, and you touch down at 1.2 mph, slower than a snowflake falls. Some of it isn't real. You're anyone, falling with the record jump's drag from its height; the real jumper went head-down at once, opened near 8,400 ft and landed in a desert, not a backyard. The tumble at the start, the spin you fight off, the airliner, the jump plane and its skydivers, the cloud and the way you fly home are the film's staging. The capsule, the balloon, the town and the people in it are made up. You fell all the way home. CHAPTERS 0:00 You fell all the way home 0:08 Twenty-four miles up 0:20 Let go 0:56 Faster than sound 1:13 843 mph 1:25 Fighting the spin 1:36 Face down on the air 2:14 An airliner 2:51 Everest's height 3:04 On your back 3:49 Four skydivers 4:30 Into the cloud 4:44 Pull 5:09 Flying home 5:51 A spiral 6:26 The water tower 7:35 Turn for home 8:51 Flare #whatif #space #skydiving #science #physics