RedBull SpaceDive

If NASA faked the moon landings, does the agency have any credibility at all? Was the Space Shuttle program also a hoax? Is the International Space Station another one? Do not dismiss these hypotheses offhand. Check out our wider NASA research and make up your own mind about it all.
Heiwa
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by Heiwa »

Image
Here we see the RedBull balloon being filled with helium via a separate hose that magically penetrates the balloon some way or another. In the background redundant airplanes are parked.

And then the balloon is filled and has a lift force of say 10 000 N (because helium is lighter than air). The hose is removed.

In order for the balloon not to fly away it is held back to ground, one way or another, with a holding back force of 10 000 N. The RedBull capsule hangs in the crane, left. Capsule is connected to the balloon via a wire on the ground.

And finally the balloon is released ... and it hardly lifts the wire on the ground. :unsure:

But a little later the balloon lift force is transmitted to the capsule and the combined balloon/capsule with a positive lift force >1 N flies away.

Had the combined balloon/capsule lift force been <0, there would be no lift off at all. :)
westhammer
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by westhammer »

First Head Cam Video of Supersonic Space jump.
http://gizmodo.com/5951725/first-head-c ... space-jump
rusty
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by rusty »

Heiwa wrote: But seconds later the balloon is just above the crane (the crane does not really need to move - the balloon will always come above it) and lifts off the capsule without a hitch and the capsule floats in the air. There is an almost perfect balance between balloon lift force acting up and gravity force acting down on the capsule with lift force just slightly bigger than gravity force so that capsule displaces upwards.
Magic! :wub: It only happens in Hollywood! :rolleyes:
The magic lift force of the balloon then remains constant until 29 000 m altitude unaffected by differences in external pressure and temperature. Impressive. Unbelievable.
I don't understand the purpose of the crane either, it should be sufficient to fix the capsule to the ground and wait until the balloon is above, just as with any other balloon. But then I also don't understand your argument about what's wrong with the "lift force just slightly bigger than the gravity force" - that's the way it works with any ballloon and you simply calculate the amount of helium you need to lift the weight of the balloon (1.7t!!) and the weight of the capsule. Also nobody claims that the "lift force of the balloon remains constant" - it just has to remain strong enough to lift the balloon.

The principle is the very same which is used for weather balloons, which can go up to altitudes of about 30km before they burst. Nothing extraordinary about that, except for the sheer size of the Red Bull balloon.
Heiwa wrote: In order for the balloon not to fly away it is held back to ground, one way or another, with a holding back force of 10 000 N. The RedBull capsule hangs in the crane, left. Capsule is connected to the balloon via a wire on the ground.
And finally the balloon is released ... and it hardly lifts the wire on the ground. :unsure:
But a little later the balloon lift force is transmitted to the capsule and the combined balloon/capsule with a positive lift force >1 N flies away.
What do you mean "it hardly lifts the wire on the ground"??? When the balloon is released, it instantly lifts its own weight and anything that hangs on it, just as you'd expect it.
Honestly, I can't see anything suspicious about this sequence. This does not necessarily mean that the balloon is 100% real, though I suppose it could be.

I agree, however, that the whole thing has the "fakery" flavor all over it. It is certainly a staged media event without many "live" spectators. My best guess is, that the balloon and the capsule are real (though maybe not as heavy as claimed), but Felix was not inside, nor was it really corroborated that the capsule reached 39km height and someone/something was dropped from it. The "jump" video is almost certainly CGI. Felix probably jumped from the helicopter/plane or the parachute/landing sequence was recorded entirely at another time and place.

On a side note, I want to draw your attention to amateur videos (at least we should assume they are genuine before we can prove otherwise) who sent cameras to the stratosphere using weather balloons or rockets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwLmGR6bPA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00eZtsuJ9M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwimocU0IIc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQw_C5KLhFM
...plus some more you'll find in the related videos. It should be quite simple and affordable for anyone here to build something like this on your own.

The interesting thing about them is how it looks like to be in the stratosphere...pitch black sky, no stars that could be captured on video camera, even before sunrise (video cameras simply don't grab that much light). In two of the videos there was an object in the sky that supposedly is the moon...what's strange is the size of the moon (too small in my opinion) and the position (always just above the horizon). Not sure there's something about it, but I think these videos are worth pondering. Has this already been discussed anywhere in this forum?

rusty
Heiwa
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by Heiwa »

@rusty

Assume that the balloon with mass m kg has lift force F = 10 001 N and that is released. Then the balloon evidently accelerates upwards with a = F/m (m/s²) disregarding friction in the atmosphere. And we can see it on the video! The balloon rises. When friction force is equal to lift force the balloon will rise with constant speed.

If the same balloon is supposed to lift a capsule that a gravity force G = 10 000 N acts on (when it hangs in the crane), the combined lift force BC of the balloon and capsule (off the crane) is BC = F - G = 1 N which is 10 000 times smaller than the lift force of the balloon itself. As the total mass of balloon/capsule has also increased, you would expect the balloon/capsule to accelerate very slowly (or not at all) but it is not seen.

Therefore the video is a fake! Or the gravity force acting on the capsule on the crane was 0 (the capsule had no mass)!
rusty
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by rusty »

Heiwa wrote: Assume that the balloon with mass m kg has lift force F = 10 001 N and that is released. ...
How do you know the lift force is not F = 20 000N? Indeed, it should be rather close to that if it is supposed to lift another ton.
Heiwa wrote: If the same balloon is supposed to lift a capsule that a gravity force G = 10 000 N acts on (when it hangs in the crane), the combined lift force BC of the balloon and capsule (off the crane) is BC = F - G = 1 N which is 10 000 times smaller than the lift force of the balloon itself....you would expect the balloon/capsule to accelerate very slowly (or not at all) but it is not seen.
Just how slow would you expect the acceleration to be? I agree it should be - at least - somewhat slower that the acceleration of the baloon without the capsule, but that's what is shown in the video. Or do you think that in the video the acceleration with capsule is (almost) identical to the acceleration without capsule? Even if this was the case, it's still not impossible as long as we don't know how to determine the initial lift force. Is it 10001? 15000? 20000? 50000?
Heiwa
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by Heiwa »

Assume that the balloon has a lift force of F = 20 000 N and very little mass. It is held back by an opposing force -F not to fly away. When it is released, it evidently flies/accelerates away at a certain rate x m/s² only slowed down by friction of the air until equilibrium is achieved, i.e. lift force equals friction force and it rises at constant velocity.

Suddenly this balloon shall carry a capsule with mass m = 1018.32 kg that is held back by gravity g = 9.82 m/s², i.e. the gravity force G acting on the capsule is 10 000 N.

The total lift force of the combined balloon/capsule then becomes F - G = 10 000 N acting on the combined mass of capsule (1018.32 kg) and balloon and it should accelerate upwards at a reduced rate compared with the balloon carrying nothing at all and the constant velocity should also be slower when equilibrium is achieved.

The motion of the balloon should be decelerated when it suddenly carries the capsule. As they cut the video just when this takes place - you only see a bit of the capsule and not the balloon - we do not know if the balloon lifting was slowed down.

But we know the speed of the balloon lifting only itself and it should be bigger than lifting also the capsule. But was it? I doubt it. The capsule had maybe no mass?

The capsule hanging a couple of meters above ground below a crane arm with hook and Felix being lifted up by a fork lift truck in order to enter the capsule are parts of the stunt. Video is cut to show the bits and pieces and we have no idea if Felix is inside the capsule when it flies off, etc.
If the capsule need to be hanging in a crane, it could be 0.1 m above ground with Felix just stepping in without forklift assistance. :P
rusty
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by rusty »

Heiwa wrote: As they cut the video just when this takes place - you only see a bit of the capsule and not the balloon - we do not know if the balloon lifting was slowed down.
I think that's the whole point about this discussion - the crucial second is virtually missing in the video, at least we'd like to see it from the same perspective to judge it correctly. Maybe it's already quite telling that they don't show it that way. But maybe not.

OK, anyway I tried to make a more detailed analysis of this "test jump" video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TCO2IdoTA
All subsequent pictures in this post are taken from this video (with added annotations).

First of all I have to say that I tried hard to find any "smoking gun" inconsistencies in features of the capsule throughout the whole video, but couldn't, except in lighting/coloring, but more on this later. So I have to assume they used the same capsule/model/CGI model consistently.

Here are two rather dubious shots of the "magical helium hose", if anyone has more information about how this is supposed to work, I politely invite her/him to come forward.
Image

Here are two shots of the capsule while still on the ground, with added comments from my side. Mainly for comparison with the later shots:
Image

Now for the most suspicious two shots. They are shown in the video more or less directly one after the other, interrupted only by a short perspective from inside the capsule. I understand that this does not mean that the second shot must have instantly followed the first one. But for how long could he have stood there waiting to jump? 20 seconds? One minute? Five minutes? Even longer?
Image
Image

You have to notice these are two totally different shots, at least with respect to perspective, lighting and coloring. If we want to assume they could be genuine the capsule must have turned. But how much? There is a patch of clouds which appears in both pictures. I can't tell exactly...but to me it looks like the turn angle could never be more than 90 deg, probably more in the 45-60 deg range. How is it possible that the coloring and lighting it so vastly different then? Did they use the same camera for both shots? But the first shot is definitely a wide angle shot, the second one is not.

Here is an A/B comparison of the first shot with another wide angle shot in the same video, but when the capsule was still on the ground. It was evidently shot from exactly the same (virtual?) camera position, the features match exactly except for the closed window and the minimal differences in the open door angle:
http://i45.tinypic.com/f9ule.gif

There are a few other things that look suspicious to me, apart from the lighting/coloring (see annotations).
1. The shadow color (lightness/blackness) differs on the different surfaces of the capsule. This would be possible in the dense atmosphere where there's a lot of ambient light. But in the stratosphere? Did they use another artificial light source?
2. Although they use a wide angle lens the difference between the angles of the two texts ("Zenith"/"Journey to the edge of space") in the lower right corner of the image just doesn't look right to me.
3. The horizon curvature in both pictures is much different. The second shot has absolutely no visible curvature. (On a side note: I'm not absolutely sure what the correct curvature should be at which altitude and lens angle...definitely something to look into on a larger scale)
4. The silly numbers/red dots on the frame in the second shot ;)

There's another thing...about that shot between the two frames from inside the capsule (at approx. 2:50). If this is shot directly after the first "outside" view, the sun should shine on the interior of the capsule. But instead there is this silly green (LED?) lighting from inside the capsule, while one window is closed and the other is half open. Why use artificial lighting and close the windows? To avoid glare from the window?

OK, so much for now. Hope this analysis was useful. Any opinions appreciated, of course.

rusty
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by Mercurial »

Ahh! Check BBC2 "Space Dive" on now - missed most of it but it's just getting to the crescendo.
Oh, the drama of it all. :puke:
icarusinbound
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by icarusinbound »

Image
source http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/09/felix- ... o-october/
Crew members recover the capsule in the desert after the successfully completed second manned test flight for Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico, USA on July 25, 2012 (c Red Bull)
Image
http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?i ... cea.187299

I just typed a couple of tight paragraphs on this, which have all just vanished....so here goes again.

- Large cubic pixel linking the image of the capsule to the truck forks: is the capsule itself a paste-in?
- Lots of pixel edging that doesn't seem right
- Very ambiguous dark section on main capsule viewed as ELA...also aligns to the vertical pixellation, and the 'swing' of the capsule
- 'moon margin straightline' under the wheels of the truck, running to right, when viewed ELA
- truck cab insertion pixel
- classic colour edging along bush-top

Logo sharpening might be fine, for sponsors. And general picture tidy-overs, for consumer acceptance. But is this an actual real-world event photograph, or not?
simonshack
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by simonshack »

*

You've gotta wonder why on Earth these two simple wires...

Image


...were substituted, at some stage, with this unwieldy spiderweb ? :blink:

Image
http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2012 ... postponed/
icarusinbound
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by icarusinbound »

Odd change of lifting kit, for sure. Note also the difference in the upper part of the fork assembly (or is it viewed angle?) Metal mesh in one picture, metal spars in other.

I'm also having a perspective failure, now that I see your bigger version of the picture. Is the swung capsule not too close to the camera, for the extent to which the standing man is reduced in height? And isn't that skele-bush at the right, both in front of, and behind the capsule at the same time?

See http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_ ... 3172816432 for much more footage of the build of the capsule. For having been test-dropped 150 times to check the effectiveness of the 8g-absorbing paper impact cells, it seems to have been a very fibreglass/artisan/labour-intensive project.

Odd that as well as molybdenum steel, pressurised foams, and special aerospace paints, it needed to be built in part using a wooden base (but that may be standard..?)

Image
3min21sec at http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_ ... 3172809894

Also...Felix, the intrepid paratrooper...why would he be needing to press even one of the 100-plus toggle switches in the very set-piece/plush capsule? (see the curiously-busy panels...I'd have expected just a single altimeter and a button marked 'PANIC')

Is that not what Ground Control are meant to do? Operate Hollywoodesque switches and buttons?
Heiwa
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by Heiwa »

But where is the very big balloon? :rolleyes: :blink: :wacko:
icarusinbound
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by icarusinbound »

Heiwa wrote:But where is the very big balloon? :rolleyes: :blink: :wacko:
Image
http://shinesquad.me/2012/10/18/red-bul ... -recovery/
Crew members load the capsule’s balloon during the recovery mission at Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico, USA on October 14, 2012. (c) Garth Milan/Red Bull Content Pool
https://www.redbullcontentpool.com/content/international/products/capsule_and_balloon_recovery_1 wrote: 16 October 2012

At nearly 30 million cubic feet / 849.505 cubic meters, the balloon that took Felix Baumgartner to his record-breaking jump altitude of 128,100 feet / 39.045 meters was three times larger than the biggest balloon ever to have ascended with a human aboard. The tiny capsule beneath it, which took five years to develop, carried not only Baumgartner, but valuable data capture equipment.



With the mission complete, how did the balloon and capsule return to earth, and what happened to them?

Once Baumgartner had safely jumped and the Mission Control team determined that the balloon and capsule were over a suitable open area, Mission Control remotely triggered the release of the capsule from the balloon.

The capsule parachute, which had been incorporated in the ‘flight train’ between the capsule and the balloon, immediately deployed. ‘Reefing’ (restraining) fabric around the circumference of the parachute held it to 17 feet / 5 meters in diameter for the initial part of the descent, allowing it to fall quickly (about 2,000 feet / 610 meters per minute). At an altitude of 20,000 feet 6.096 meters, the reefing was automatically released by a barometric sensor, allowing the canopy to expand to its full 100 feet / 30 meters in diameter so that the capsule would descend more slowly (estimated about 6 meters per second) with a minimum of swaying. Its descent took about 24 minutes.

The capsule’s landing in a flat, open area just over 55 miles / 88 kilometers due east from the launch site was gentle - under 3 Gs - so soft that the impact displaced only about 30 percent of the crush pad material incorporated to absorb the force. The capsule softly rolled onto its back, with Baumgartner’s door facing the sky.

According to design, as the capsule fell away from the balloon in the stratosphere, a cable tore a ‘gore’ (panel) from the balloon, releasing its (nontoxic) helium. The empty plastic envelope fell to earth, passing the capsule and landing about 15 minutes later about 7 miles / 11 kilometers west of the capsule.

A crew of twelve personnel were waiting to recover the equipment. Together they formed a convoy of five trucks and an all-terrain vehicle. Thanks to the flight path predictions of meteorologist Don Day, visual tracking via ground-based optical systems, and GPS trackers, the team was within 300 yards of the capsule when it landed.

The team believes they heard Baumgartner break the sound barrier as they waited for the equipment to descend. “We heard a sound like a sonic boom,” said capsule crew chief Jon Wells. “A lot of us are from aerospace backgrounds and we looked at each other, practically in disbelief. We know that sound.”

On arriving at the capsule, the team first shut off the liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen systems. Wells took photos of the ‘switchology’ – the switch configuration of Baumgartner’s instrumentation and the oxygen and nitrogen quantities and pressure, to document the exact configuration at landing.

Next, the crew shut down the capsule’s system of 15 cameras and retrieved the camera data. Then the crew from Sage Cheshire Aerospace, which built the capsule, completed the final step by shutting down the rest of the systems and overall capsule power.

Next up was balloon retrieval. The crew drove the 7 miles / 11 kilometers to the balloon and managed to wrangle the unwieldy 40 acres of material weighing 3,708 pounds / 1682 kilograms into a large open truck within about 45 minutes.

Mission accomplished, the capsule and balloon crews arrived back at the Roswell launch site with the equipment at about 5:00 pm local time, seven and a half hours after Baumgartner’s takeoff, and about 21 hours after most of the crew had arrived at the airfield to begin launch preparations the night before.

The capsule and the balloon envelope are being returned via ground to the mission’s technical hub at Sage Cheshire Aerospace in Lancaster, California. While some of the camera data was downloaded immediately in Roswell, more will be extracted at FlightLine Films in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Temperature, pressure, and other data from the capsule recorders will be analyzed for months to come, and the information will be shared with the science community. The vessel itself will be saved for posterity.

“Joe Kittinger’s gondola in 1960 was like a Model T – practical and very durable,” Wells comments. “With very sophisticated, sensitive equipment and all the ‘luxuries’ of cutting-edge technology, our Red Bull Stratos capsule was more like a modern supercar. From every standpoint, including a technical one, it really did its job.”
Heiwa
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by Heiwa »

At nearly 30 million cubic feet / 849 505 cubic meters, the balloon that took Felix Baumgartner to his record-breaking jump altitude of 128,100 feet / 39.045 meters was three times larger than the biggest balloon ever to have ascended with a human aboard. The tiny capsule beneath it, which took five years to develop, carried not only Baumgartner, but valuable data capture equipment.
With a start weight of say 3100 kg you need 3 000 m3 of helium just to float and probably 4 000 m3 of helium in the balloon to rise in the sky and it will expand say 350 times due to lower air pressure (300 Pa ?) at 39 000 m altitude, i.e. to 1 400 000 m3, so the balloon still seems a little small (but not as shown by me in a previous post when I incorrectly assumed the air pressure was 1.48 Pa at 39 000 m altitude and a much bigger balloon was needed). But who really cares about this record-jump in a record balloon and a record balloon-trip-mission-control?

Imagine a 117.53 m diameter (when full - 850 000 m3) balloon dropping down in your backyard. It has about 44 000 m² of fabric around it weighing 1800 kg. :P
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Re: RedBull SpaceDive

Unread post by Nasaspotlight »

Very nice thread deconstructing the Red Bull Space jump hoax. I am brand new to this site (as a logged in user, I've been lurking a while) and have introduced myself in the other thread as an fyi. I often wonder if some of these hoaxes are ritualistic in nature. That thought process is based off of something I read in the Aurora-Batman thread.

I am not sure if any of you remember, but probably close to ten years ago, Red Bull used to air these horribly animated commercials with the tag-line “Red Bull, it gives you wings!” One of their first commercials like this was an animated commercial about the moon landing being a hoax.

I wonder if TPTB force these rogue companies/people (the companies/people that gain mass appeal at or close to their onset by challenging TPTB in a "wink-wink" kind of way) to participate in hoaxes like this as a sort of retribution for their earlier “mistake” of challenging the status quo?
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