Skip to content

Comment on Supersonic free fall from 120,000 feet live at 8:30AM ESTparent

Comments

In addition to jlgreco's mention of 'sideways' momentum (like a shuttle re-entry) which this skydiver won't have, keep in mind he's falling from within the atmosphere so he's got resistance immediately and no chance to speed up to velocities that cause enough friction to burn up meteors. A meteor gets caught by Earth's gravity long before it touches Earth's atmosphere and has plenty of time to accelerate to fabulous speeds; when it hits the atmosphere, the speed makes for enough friction to burn/melt/destroy the thing.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.