14 thoughts on “Baumgartner Bleg”

1. Skydiving is relatively unregulated, since the FAA does not consider skydivers to have a significant effect on airspace. There’s a fact sheet here:

   http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=6638

   1. That’s sort of my point. If the FAA doesn’t regulate skydiving for paticipant safety, why should it do it for space flight?

      1. Skydivers tend to do less collateral damage when things go wrong. Many space vehicles carry lots of energy that can really make a dint.

         1. That has nothing to do with participant safety, which is what I’m getting at.

            1. My apologies, I got locked on to your response to Edward, with relation to: “FAA doesn’t regulate skydiving”. That is different from your question of FAA regulating the flight, which was the balloon portion. I’d look at what say the FAA had in the capsule.

2. I’d be more interested in what hurdles they had to pass to launch the balloon. That capsule is going to be carrying a pretty hefty amount of kinetic energy when it hits the ground if anything goes wrong after the pilot has left the building.

   I’m not too worried about Baumgartner. He’s a big boy and can make his own decisions about risking his life. And, as noted above, he’s not going to make too much of a hole if he’s wrong about his landing options.

   I’d think the FAA would be interested in that balloon, though.

   1. I’m not too worried about Baumgartner. He’s a big boy and can make his own decisions about risking his life.

      My point is that people who want the FAA-AST moratorium to end now disagree with respect to spaceflight participants.

   2. I’d be more interested in what hurdles they had to pass to launch the balloon. That capsule is going to be carrying a pretty hefty amount of kinetic energy when it hits the ground if anything goes wrong after the pilot has left the building.

      Well, if it’s anything like the stuff the non-profit I work with (on occasion) launches, it’s probably pretty light and fluffy. So even if the parachutes or whatever tangle up and the balloon stays attached, it’ll fall relatively slowly, probably slowly enough that Baumgartner could have survived (probably with serious injury) a landing even if he couldn’t get out.

      Since it’s big enough to carry a person, it’s probably massive enough to mess up whatever it lands on. But that’s also why one launches such things from the middle of nowhere.

      It sounds like it’d be worth asking Baumgartner directly. There’s got to be an interesting story about how he got that all put together and he (or members of his crew) might like to talk about it.

3. I think I saw an FAA jacket on scene at the landing site. It’d be interesting to know if he was there as a guest, or in some mandatory official capacity.

   It’d be interesting to know if there was an FAA station in the command center.

4. Probably needed an Experimental Air Racing/Exhibition airworthiness certificate for the balloon and capsule.
   An ATC clearance into the airspace above FL180.
   Don’t know about the unmanned balloon capsule after the jump.

   1. Once they reached FL600, they were again in uncontrolled airspace.

5. Around 30-40 kft the announcer mentioned something about there being no commercial traffic today.

   1. That was an accident — they only launched today due to the weather. I’m sure that the FSDO still issued a NOTAM.

6. The audio mentioned that they had coordinated with the FAA ATC to reroute traffic in the area.

   Both balloon flights to high altitude and skydiving have well-established regulatory processes, nothing novel there. The capsule had an FAA tail number (something like N503XB) on it, and had the required “EXPERIMENTAL” placard inside.

Comments are closed.