Felix the nutter maths/geography question

[doodab]

Never mind that - the conversation in the mudskipper household is "What would happen if he farted as he broke the sound barrier?"

A fart in a spacesuit. Nasty.

Presumably he had to avoid farting for the whole 3 hours or so, which must have been hard with the altitude changes, even with the pressure suit.

[mudskipper]

Never mind that - the conversation in the mudskipper household is "What would happen if he farted as he broke the sound barrier?"

[VectraMan]

If he wasn't subject to earth's gravity, he wouldn't have been able to freefall.

And if he wasn't in the atmosphere, the helium balloon wouldn't have got him up there.

[mudskipper]

If he wasn't subject to earth's gravity, he wouldn't have been able to freefall.

[VectraMan]

My understanding is that as the balloon was still subject to earths atmosphere and gravity as 'we' rotated with earth so did our man Felix.

Today's little brain teaser is, assuming he wasn't rotating with us but just went vertically up/down. Where would he have landed?

I don't know the answer as I haven't worked it out. Just bored really.

If he went vertically up/down, he'd land in the same place on the earth. Because "vertically" means perpendicular to the earth's surface.

What you're asking is what if he wasn't spinning with the earth. But, how can that be? Because at the start he is spinning with the earth, he has rotational momentum. So to answer the question, you have to know how quickly he loses that rotational momentum, which means knowing what's slowing him down. Or perhaps what you're saying is what if he started with no rotational momentum, which would mean he'd have to be on a vehicle travelling in the opposite direction of the earth's rotation at exactly the right speed. But that would mean when he set off "vertically", he'd actually be travelling at an angle and it would take longer to reach the desired height.

[minestrone]

Directly above the center of the Earth.

[Old Hack]

The earth would spin beneath him at 1674km/hr * cos ( 33.39 degrees ).

So after 2 hours he'd be 1404km*2 west of the launch site.

I think he'd get wet.

Adding in additional factors like the jet stream, which runs at around 140mph

[EternalOptimist]

if he had gone straight up and lost all ties to the earth, he would have come down about 3,718,400 miles west of where he went up.

There are five speeds you have to consider
rotation of the earth (as per zeity)
wobble (negligable)
speed of the planet around the sun (c 70k mph)
speed of the solar system around the galaxy (c 450,000 mph)
speed of the galaxy wrt universe core (c 1,339,200 mph)

[speling bee]

Maybe he would be in his own solar orbit.

[Doggy Styles]

But he was ascending for 2hrs.

Ah, we're including that are we. Probably somewhere in the East Pacific then.

[MarillionFan]

According to my calculations he should have landed here

[Pondlife]

But he was ascending for 2hrs.

[Doggy Styles]

Easy enough to work out. Working on the earths circumference at the latitude he jumped out, if he took 10 minutes to descend it would be:

Circumference at lat
--------------------
24 * 6

west of where he started. Wouldn't it?

[Pondlife]

My understanding is that as the balloon was still subject to earths atmosphere and gravity as 'we' rotated with earth so did our man Felix.

Today's little brain teaser is, assuming he wasn't rotating with us but just went vertically up/down. Where would he have landed?

I don't know the answer as I haven't worked it out. Just bored really.