From early 2012 to late 2014, the Stratospheric Exploration (StratEx) team was designing, building, and testing a system to take a person to the stratosphere and safely back to Earth. It was assumed from the start of the program that the descent method of our Pilot, Dr. Alan Eustace, would be a freefall from high altitude to a main parachute deployment relatively close to the ground. From those early stages it became increasingly important to have a mathematical model capable of predicting the key variables associated with the position and aerodynamic condition of the pilot at any time during the descent. This is a description of how we approached the problem of analyzing the freefall of a human in a pressure suit with a stabilizing drogue parachute from extreme high altitudes, including a transition through the sound barrier and the results of that analysis. Ultimately this paper will describe a method by which several key variables including altitude, velocity, and relative forces on the pilot and stabilizing parachute can be predicted at any point during descent for any static starting altitude within the troposphere, stratosphere or perhaps the lower portions of the mesosphere.
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