The Kraken

Corporate boxes and suites are way below capacity so it won't be a complete "sell out". But you're correct, against Man United there were swathes of empty seats in the regular areas of the ground; hopefully this has since been sorted out.

Bring on a bugger ground, it's entirely what we need.

Whoosh.

You seem to have had a complete reversal of opinion TDD. Pre-season you were imploring everyone to have patience and not start thread after thread doubting the manager if we made an inglorious start. What changed?

Get them some seats in the Mike Channon suite. It's shit and overpriced but at least they'll get to watch the game.

There were safety features built in; for example if his spin had gotten more out of control it would have automatically deployed his 'chute to correct it. You say "blacked out or worse". There is a part midway through the fall, the audio is very scratchy but after a minute or so of silence Baumgartner says something which I'm sure sounds very similar to "blacked out". Being as he went through the sound barrier (who knows what effect that had on his body) you'd simply have to assume that he had all sorts of redundancy built into the suit for his parachute to self-activate. Given that he's set all manner of world records (highest manned baloon flight, highest freefall, fastest skydive) while its a shame that he didn't get the longest duration I'm sure he won't categorise it as anything but an enormous success.

Indeed. Still listed on the OS: So what's the deal; is that final hour after full time being rescinded completely? Or just for the Tottenham game (being played on a Sunday, is that a factor??)

No thanks. That would be a disaster and completely contrary to the setup we have here. Di Canio is massively self-absorbed and sees Swindon as "his". He is a bigger personality than all the players and that is entirely by his own self-design. He runs everything within the club, all transfers go through him, he pretty much runs everything on the playing side. And he is hugely reactionary and over the top, the fireworks between him and Cortese would see him sacked within a month.

Exactly this. We've not yet had the opportunity to pick from a totally complete and injury-free squad. And perhaps won't for some time yet.

It really doesnt't. And I do find it quite funny that you accuse me of "cherry picking" whilst also doing exactly the same yourself. Probably best you pop me on ignore though if you get that upset about it.

And yet you still had a rambling essay to try and do just that. How utterly bizarre.

Apparently his suit was built with all sorts of tech, which needs to be evaluated by the relevant authority before his records get ratified. But you'd imagine that would be one of them, and will get released in due course. Just been reading his twitter; sounds like the spin was really serious. And apparently he has said that will be his last ever jump, he's knocking it all on the head now. I guess after that, no other skydive will come close.

That's 100mph off the estimated speed at the time! And pretty bloody incredible. Although it would perhaps explain why he didn't beat Kittinger's freefall time record; he was going too fast!!

I think he'll probably be able to find it in his heart to live with his abject failure of only breaking a few world records.

Just watched the descent online again; his estimated speed maxed out at 729mph, around a minute or so into the fall. That spin he was in just looked absolutely crazy.

I'm still scratching my head at why the likes of Newcastle, Sunderland, Villa and Everton (all clubs with bigger stadia than ours and which throughout last season they each struggled to fill) haven't switched on to this brilliant idea of giving away extra seats to the visiting side. Why hasn't this happened?

It'd be quite some trick to get around 40,000 fans to come and watch Wigan, that's for sure! Perhaps the more pertinent games to highlight are the likes of Everton, Newcastle, Sunderland, Villa etc etc. Against the top 5 or 6 we'll get much more than 32000 crowds; as you rightly say, those games are much more attractive to Saints fans. The less popular sides such as Wigan, Fulham, Norwich, Stoke etc, I wouldn't have thought we'll ever get much above the current capacity for those. The mid-range sides will probably be the clincher; regularly sell those out in advance and we can realistically say we need something bigger. Only just get to capacity; and you have ot doubt the rationale of building a bigger stadium for the sake of 5 or 6 matches a season.

Well of course right now we just don't know for sure. Which is why the only common sense thing to do is monitor attendances over a sustained period of time and make a decision from that.

They're kind of already there. Take a look at the Tottenham and Man United games this season; sold out 2 weeks prior to the game. So we could obviously get more than 32,000 for those games. How many extra, that's the debatable part. Of course the trick is; how do the club get those extra fans to come to the game against the likes of Villa, Fulham and Wigan; thereby making talk of a bigger stadium a much more realistic proposition. We're simply not there yet.

Doesn't look like he broke the duration record, but he got the highest and the fastest. Not sure yet if he broke the speed of sound; its to be confirmed. My guess is he didn't, speed of sound is 768mph, from what I could see of his speed he got up to around 730mph (though that was only an estimation, I guess the tech in his suit will have the actual values).

In the ascent they said that if he got into too much of a spin (too much g-force) his 'chute would open automatically to stabilise him. Looked really dicey though!! What a LAD. He'll never have to buy a beer for as long as he lives.

This is thoroughly boring and absolutely captivating all at the same time! The spuds on this guy though; amazing.

Wow, great link, cheers for this!

Stunning revelations; thanks.

How much of West Ham have you seen this season to form yours, out of interest? I haven't watched them once this season so I've got no idea what their style of play is currently like.