Three New Centennial Challenges

Interesting
Skydiver Plans Record-Breaking Supersonic Space Jump
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/skydiverplansrecordbreakingsupersonicspacejump
A skydiver is making progress with plans to leap from near the edge of space in a dive that would break world records and the sound barrier.

Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner is a step closer to attempting the feat after a series of recent high-altitude test jumps. He plans to make his ambitious jump attempt later this year.

Starting in the stratosphere at 120,000 feet above the ground, Baumgartner will leap from a capsule suspended by a helium balloon near the boundary of space.

Sponsored by the energy drink company Red Bull, Baumgartner's mission — called Red Bull Stratos — seeks to extend the "safety zone" of human atmospheric bailout last set in 1960 by diver Joe Kittinger. This limit defines the uppermost altitude a human being can safely jump from.

"Right now, the space shuttle escape system is certified to 100,000 feet," said the mission's medical director Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon. "Why is that? Because Joe Kittinger went there. You've got a lot of companies that are vying for the role of being the commercial space transport provider for tourism, for upper atmospheric science, and so on. These systems, particularly during the test and development phase, need a potential escape system, which we may be able to help them provide with the knowledge we gain."

That's a nice rationale but hardly practical. Who could jump out of a spacecraft on top of or hanging out the side of a rocket at 100K feet going many times the speed of sound and survive the environment they would be immediately subjected to? This skydiver will be static when he makes the jump.

It may not be practical for your thinking, this maybe why you do not understand what the purpose is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_physiology

"Right now, the space shuttle escape system is certified to 100,000 feet," said the mission's medical director Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon. "Why is that? Because Joe Kittinger went there.

It is clear no one is asking KSC for assistance in any form.

This is awesome and exactly what NASA should be doing. By creating these challenges they inspire educators to use these ideas in lessons, thereby inspiring new innovators all across the country.

great stuff for pennies on the dollar.

as the bottom of the article says, I'm glad somebody is really taking space elevators seriously. Every advance in tethers and drives takes us another step closer to having an elevator deployed on the moon, bringing up that water and other in-situ products.