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I wonder what surviving human held the record before balloons (excluding edge cases like jumping gaps on a mountain bridge). Probably it was someone falling from a cliff into snow or water, but maybe it involved something weird like a gunpowder explosion or volcano.

Explainxkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3039:_Human_Altitude

  • kbal
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    533 days ago

    I’m more interested in the altitude of the median human. I suppose it’s increased slightly since the invention of office buildings, chairs, and so on.

  • Rhaedas
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    203 days ago

    I thought this was a beautiful way to see our progress out in one frame. Then I thought, what about human object reach? So Voyager 1 would be about three more log ticks up at 25 billion km (about the top of the nav buttons) with other probes falling below that at their appropriate times.

  • @[email protected]
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    153 days ago

    The pre-1800 numbers sound too low. There are lots of old buildings much higher than 10 meters high, and I doubt they were all unoccupied at the same time.

    • @kerrigan778
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      183 days ago

      If you look at the description of the data ie. That falls are considered to be gaining altitude not losing altitude, they seem to be referring to distance from solid object connected to ground not distance from ground or sea level. So mountains and buildings don’t count unless you jump off of it.

  • @SocialMediaRefugee
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    63 days ago

    Should include below the earth’s surface too. That would be a lot less impressive.

    • jungle
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      103 days ago

      Must be years without launches.

  • @Tilgare
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    83 days ago

    I want to see how this looks without the log scale on the y axis.

  • Iron LynxOP
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    43 days ago

    Poster’s note: I just noticed it uploaded and didn’t see it posted yet, so I rectified that.