High Dive (my speech for 9-19-07)

High Dive - (I use a power point as my visual aid throughout my entire presentation.)

1. Introduction
1. Attention grabber

i. Ever since the beginning of time men and woman alike have wanted to fly, to be like the birds. We have developed greater and wilder ways to scare ourselves from learning how to fly airplanes to skydiving. Is it done for the adrenaline rush, a rush that can’t be put into words unless you have experienced it yourself? Well now there is a new extreme sport, one far more daring than the rest, the “high dive.”

2. Relativity

i. The “high dive” is accomplished by shooting up on an open rocket 60 miles above the Earth and free falling safely back to your feet on the ground. It can be done for sport or even someday used as a more safe way for astronauts to come back to earth.

3. Preview statement

i. Today we’ll first fly through (literally in a couple minutes) the men behind the idea, then discuss the suit needed to complete such a feat, and wrap up with how the dive itself would play out.

2. The men behind the idea are Rick Tomlinson and Jonathon Clark.
1. They are quite the “odd couple.”

i. Rick Tomlinson is a long time civilian space booster who helped found “Space Frontier Foundation” and “X Price Foundation.” He is an entrepreneur with an anti-corporate attitude. He has bashed NASA several times, but hopes that this death defying feat will capture a younger audience and make space more appealing. He says he is “the bad boy of rock in the space field.”

ii. Jonathon Clark is at the other end of the spectrum. He is a clean cut, much more quite man, with a lengthy resume. Clark is a certified neurologist, 26-year Navy veteran who did parachute training with the Special Forces, and former NASA flight surgeon. His wife, Laurel Clark, was an astronaut who perished on the Columbia disaster in 2003. So for Clark building a space-diving suit is a personal mission to help prevent future mishaps.

2. Reasoning

i. By 2009 they hope to have accomplished a 60 mile dive. Eventually, their ultimate goal in a drop from 150 miles, literally turning the diver into a human meteor. They hope this could function as the most extreme sport in history or as a more practical use for astronauts to return to Earth when re-entry goes wrong.

3. The highest skydive to date was set in August 1960 by a U.S. Air Force captain named Joseph Kittenger you jumped from 102, 800ft from a balloon. The suit Tomlinson and Clark need to build for their dive contains a lot of the same equipment as Kittenger’s suit.
1. The actual engineering of the suit will be done by Tomas Sviteck, a NASA consultant. He will be assisted by Bill Stone, noted aquatic-dive and life-support specialist, who will create the internal breathing and life support aspects, and Chris Gilman, founder of a special-effects company Global Effects, who will design the pressure suit.
2. This suit will be made from scratch, due to the extreme heat changes, pressure changes, and oxygen that must be provided to the diver, there is no other suit like it. (insert picture of suit with descriptions)
4. For sport or safety, whatever the case may be, the dive would be the same.
1. You more or less sit in a chair and ride a rocket up to 60 miles. After you have composed yourself you leap off and soar toward the Earth at an astounding 2,500mph. By this point your suit has heated to over +400degF. Your drogue chute deploys for stability because at these speeds you would literally rip apart. When you reach the thick lower atmosphere you feel a tough 4.4Gs as you slow to a terminal velocity of 120mph. Finally at 3,000ft you pull your chute and glide safely to Earth. This entire thrill ride would last about ten minutes.
2. (show chart to illustrate)
5. Conclusion.
1. Tomlinson and Clark’s “high dive” could turn out to be the greatest sport known to man and a safe backup for astronauts’ re-entry. It’s no easy task though designing a suit that can withstand the issues that the dive would ensue. We may be using new technology to complete such a feat, but turning an idea into reality was no different ages ago. I want to leave with one quote from Leonardo da Vinci that I feel capture the way I feel about the excitement of such a project. “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.” (Leonardo da Vinci)

Weed, Speed. (2007). Aviation and Space: High Dive. Popular Science. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/3c082d2daa463110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/3.html.

David, Leonard. (2001). Space Parachuting: Skydiving from the Edge. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_diving_010608-1.html.

(2005). The Bends: Decompression Syndromes. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.emedicinehealth.com/decompression_syndromes_the_bends/article_em.htm.

(2007). G-force. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force.

Weed, Speed. (2007, July). The Future of Re-entry. Popular Science Magazine, 53-57.

(2007). Space Frontier Foundation. Retrieved September 11, 2007, from http://www.space-frontier.org/.