Submarine, I was thinking.
At 100 miles up, there’s just enough atmosphere that your orbit would eventually decay. Of course, you’d burn up before you got anywhere near the ground.
Could you not use a parachute or shuttlecock device (like Spaceship One) to slow you down sufficiently before you hit dense atmosphere?
The standard cut-off is 6 hours with some races extended to 8, so I don’t think you’d make it.
If you shortened that rest interval and didn’t leave the course during it, you could squeak in before the deadline and call yourself a marathon finisher.
Point is, there are other rules and conditions besides “run 42.2 km”.
No, it would be vaporized. Look at the What-If article Riemann linked to above, or watch this 1-minute NASA video on reentry, for a better picture of what orbital speed means. SpaceshipOne does not approach orbital speed.
Maybe some sort of device that slowly lifts you up to 100 miles of altitude (like a balloon, except that a balloon couldn’t do it, but something that slowly pushes you upwards, maybe by lots of tiny, gentle rocket pulses,) and then from 100 miles you’d jump. That way you wouldn’t have to be at orbital speed to be in orbit in the first place. And you’d basically only get to Mach 1 or so on the way down.
Reaching space without reaching orbital speeds (sub-orbital space flight) is exactly what SpaceShipOne did, and what the Virgin program is planning to do.
Why? The atmosphere is very thin at high altitudes and you’re not aiming for a fast descent. Sure you’ve got a lot of energy in your velocity but you just need something to gradually slow you down that can dissipate that energy. Perhaps a series of parachutes - at very high altitudes a very large semi-rigid parachute - or parafoils or other devices?
Again, watch the NASA video or read this. The speed you are talking about is nowhere near the realm of what works with a parachute.
No, it won’t work. 8km/s is just too fast. You’re not solving any problem by have a large parachute. The problem is that as soon as you hit the thinnest upper layers of the atmosphere you will fry, and any parachute-like drag device will shred. That’s why the dissipation of energy for re-entry from orbital speeds is handled by thick heat shields that end up looking like this:
Yes, but a nap was involved.
Marathon courses are not standardized even year to year at the same locations. This year let’s say the Boston Marathon is 20% up hill, 30% down hill and the rest of the race is somewhat level, but New York’s is 30% up hill, 25% down hill and the rest of the course is somewhat level. Can someone really say that these two 26.2 mile races should be considered the same and one’s time in Boston can be compared to one’s time in NY?
You want a sub 2 hour marathon? Start at Whitney Portal elevation 8360 feet (2548 m) and have all the competitors run 26.2 miles toward Death Valley. Its downhill all the way. (Whitney Portal is the finish line for the Badwater Ultramarathon race.) I can almost guarantee a few runners would clock in under 2 hours.
A 100 meter or 10,000 meter race is virtually the same any where in the world. Marathons, not so much.
I’m sorry, but I’m still not getting it. Yes, I can see that rapid deceleration is going to require a heat shield but I’m thinking about a slow deceleration, spiralling in over multiple orbits.
How do you imagine that you are controlling this slow deceleration/descent? You are orbiting at 17,000 mph in space. To initiate your descent, you must decelerate a few hundred mph in space, requiring thrust. Then gravity starts pulling you down. Then you hit the upper layers of the atmosphere at 16,700 mph. Then you’re dead.
The only way to slow more without hitting the atmosphere is to have a huge amount of thrust available to decelerate you in space, and to add upward thrust to stop you falling. This requires a huge amount of rocket fuel.
It’s not the rate of deceleration that’s a problem, it’s the speed with which you hit the air molecules. That speed will kill you unless you have a heat shield like the shuttle, or you slow yourself down before you hit the atmosphere.
Wouldn’t work, at least not to be considered an IAAF world record. Their standards for a marathon record say that the start and finish can’t be more than a certain distance apart (so that runners can’t be helped by a tailwind) and that the course can’t have too much elevation change. Strangely, the Boston Marathon, probably the most well-known in the world, doesn’t meet those standards. The world record can’t be set there.
There may be other regs that I don’t know about, too; my info comes from this article which is specifically about Boston. The sub 2 hour effort that TroutMan linked to is happening at the Monza race track in Italy, so at least the point-to-point and elevation standards should be okay.
Those are the two main rules related to the course. The other rules are about measuring and certifying the course, and the eligibility of the runners.
I’m not sure if Nike has released details on the logistics of their attempt, but it sounds like it wouldn’t be ratified as a world record. From here:
How about optimizing how far you can stay alive before dying…would you burn and ablate faster if you cannon-balled in, or if you belly-flopped?
Survival would be longest if you present the lowest cross-sectional area in the direction of travel, so probably diving Superman-style. But that would probably make a difference of milliseconds.