this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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xkcd

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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

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Chairs were a game changer

[–] Repelle 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Chairs are overrated. I pretty much always choose the floor. Even the couch tends to be used mostly as a backrest for sitting on the floor

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The floor is great. It’s really hard to fall off the floor.

[–] Frozengyro 4 points 2 weeks ago

vertigo enters chat

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

I wonder if it may well have gone down with the combination of boom in population and rapid urbanization around coasts.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks 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] 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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 18 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Even before tall buildings, trees should put the noise floor above 30 meters.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

very approximate

But what are the constant dips between years?

[–] jungle 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Must be years without launches.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So in 1882 nobody went above 1.5 meters.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Something weird must've been going on for sure. Two years later Flatland was published.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Lol, immediately as the 2D book is published, boom, 3km in 3rdD!

[–] Tilgare 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)
[–] SocialMediaRefugee 6 points 1 week ago

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

[–] Iron_Lynx 4 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

But the Apollo program was fake propaganda!