With less fanfare, new record for highest-altitude jump.

It was neat, but I have to say the jump last year by Baumgartner looked more impressive, probably because he had to jump out of a nice safe launch capsule.
But,.. in reality, both were really gutsy efforts.
Congratulations to all involved.
Do it again.. do it again,..

Lol, classic landing. Splat!

nice to see something like this can be achieved without the likes of the red-bull w@nk

TurtleHunter said..
so what happens to the ballon after, does it just become another piece of space junk

Without the weight of the payload, it just continues to rise until the balloon pops,.. then down it all comes.
Or,.. they might even have some form of triggering deflation by way of radio, mobile phone or whatever.
It's highly unlikely that it would still be up there.

pweedas said..

TurtleHunter said..
so what happens to the ballon after, does it just become another piece of space junk

Without the weight of the payload, it just continues to rise until the balloon pops,.. then down it all comes.
Or,.. they might even have some form of triggering deflation by way of radio, mobile phone or whatever.
It's highly unlikely that it would still be up there.

A quick Google shows the bigger scientific balloons have mechanisms to deflate or release the gas, so they can recover the hardware platform and the polyethylene balloon for proper disposal. Apparently this mob just acquired a scientific ballloon instead of designing/building one from scratch. It would be fair to suggest they had a deflate mechanism carried over so they can get their hardware back as well.