Hi all. I’m working on a SF story. Could any of you help me? Suppose a man gets powers equivalent to Superman, but they come and go at random. Now imagine our man in cruising at, say, 40,000 feet above sea level and flying at, oh, say 150 mph. My question is this: if the powers suddenly left him, would he die before he could hit the ground? Would the thin air or wind force kill him? (He gets the powers back before impact, but I need to know if the fall itself is not something a man could survive.)
So you can free fall for more than twice your 40,000 feet and survive. It’s certainly cold and the oxygen is thin at that height, but heck, you’re not at that height for very long.
I suppose you have some good explanation for having someone fly at that height to begin with, let alone someone whose powers “come and go at random”!
Well…I suppose a very good reason to fly at that height would be that if he lost his powers, he might regain them again before he hit the ground.
I think the biggest danger would be him passing out from the lack of oxygen at that height. Which means his powers would be useless to him unconscious, but then again he might wake up in time as well.
I dunno…if my Superman-like powers came and went at random, I think I’d limit my altitude to roughly 5’, and keep the speed to about 10 mph. Probably wear a helmet, too.
At 40,000 feet and 150 mph he’s got two big dangers (other than the eventual results of gravity): lack of oxygen, and cold.
He WILL pass out. Assuming he falls more or less straight down (reasonable under most circumstances) he will probably reach air sufficiently dense to sustain human life before the lack of oxygen kills him. However, there are circumstances where this might not happen - if he gets caught in, say, the updrafts involved in a thunderstorm they might keep him aloft long enough to kill him (this has occassionally happened to people bailing out of disabled airplanes at high altitudes. There were a number of instances during WWII in particular)
It is also extremely cold, and a 150 mph breeze in your face won’t help either. Any exposed flesh may freeze in seconds. Frost bite is a real bummer. This can probably be helped by a colorful costume covering most of the person in question, although you might want something warmer than the traditional spandex.
At 40,000 feet, the Time of Useful Consciousness is 9 – 12 seconds
At 30,000 feet it is 1 – 2 minutes.
At 30,000 feet the air temperature is generally -48° F.
Granted, as Expano Mapcase mentioned, you wouldn’t be at the altitude for long after superpowers give out. However, the brain might get fuddled enough to prevent clear thinking during the few minutes of passing through lower altitudes.
Thanks all so much! I really do appreciate all the info.
So, what I’m gleaning is this:
He falls fast, is bitterly cold, passes out, and awakens alive and mostly unharmed except some windburn and frostbite in a large crater (made by the impact of his once again invulnerable body before impact).
Though perhaps he may not pass out since he’s falling at about a thousand feet every five seconds, and just might fall enough to get oxygen going again.
Well he won’t automatically pass out. A French skydiver (might have been Patrick de Gayardon, my memory is a tad fuzzy) did a jump from 40,000 feet without bailout oxygen (I’m sure he was sucking pure 02 on the way up in the plane) several years ago and he was fine.
However let’s suppose he does. In skydiving a good rule of thumb is that when you exit a plane in level flight (like your superhero going from 150mph forward to no power) it takes about 10 seconds to fall the first thousand feet, and then about 5.5 seconds for each additional 1000 feet (you’re at terminal velocity which varies with a whole bunch of factors but 110mph is a good average). I’m not sure how these numbers change at 40,000 feet - terminal velocity is higher but I don’t know exactly how much higher. If you double those falling distances then in the first ten seconds he’ll be unconscious but down to 38k. At 34 seconds he’ll be at 30k and might start to regain consciousness. I’m pretty sure that “useful consciousness” doesn’t imply that beyond that time you’re out like a light, just that you’re “goofy as a duck on ether” - you’re conscious but not really functional.
Skydivers doing high altitude jumps have to have onboard oxygen if they’re going to spend much time above 15000 feet (I think anything more than 8 minutes?). When I went up for a 20000 foot jump we had oxygen masks but you took it off before going out the door. Evidently you get a little wacky for the first few seconds but then air gets thicker and all is well. Higher altitude sport jumps (there are places that do training for 27k-30k jumps) require bailout oxygen and the photos that I’ve seen show people in warm clothes.
Also, the low air pressure will tend to suck the air out of your lungs - you can NOT hold your breathe under these circumstances, and attempting to do so may result in injury. It will take a little time (not much, but measurable) for your lungs to suck in new air, re-oxygenate your blood, and get your brain woke up again.
Unconcious people tend to fall in a position that makes terminal velocity around 120 mph. That’s fast, but not super-fast. And, as I said, air currents may or may not further affect that.
By the way - “useful conciousness” is very loosely defined. “Useful” in the sense of “oh, look, it’s daylight”, not useful in the sense of solving quadratic equations.
People who have survived falls from that height (there have been a few) typically report something like “Oh, something bad happened… then I woke up in a 12 foot snowdrift” There are exceptions (it seems there always are) but unconcious all the way to the ground is quite possible.
I was responding to the “will he fall fast enough to reach thick air before losing conciousness” and the answer is no, you’ll pass out first. Obviously not the most clearly thought out of responses, and by the time I hit “submit” someone else had posted ahead of me, further separating the two posts.
Small crater. Terminal velocity is pretty low for a non-aerodynamic, tumbling person with a cape. 120 mph, as someone said. I wouldn’t want to be underneath when he lands, but he’s not going to be blasting out swimming pool sized craters. More likely, the poor SOB is going to wake up planted like an arrow face down in bedrock.
You misread the Time of Useful Consciousness table. At FL400 (flight level 400, or 40,000 feet) it says 15 to 20 seconds, not 9-12. So, it only takes 15 seconds to drop to 30,000, where it is 1-2 minutes, and another 5 seconds to get to 25,000 where it is 3-5 minutes.
Your average superhero-in-an-identity-crisis should be able to handle that. It’s not like they’d not be expecting it.
