On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 20:42:13 +0000, JimO wrote:

I calculate, if he overshot the boundary by 400 feet,
he was 'in space' legally for 10 seconds. Does this compute?

I think so, but you should "show your work."

Assuming, as he almost certainly was, that he was in freefall during that
period, then it would have taken twice the time required to fall that 400
feet. Since s = 1/2 a t^2, t = sqrt(2s/a), since a = 32 ft/s^2 t =
sqrt(800/32) = 5, so 5 up and 5 down makes 10 seconds total.

400 feet is pretty close to the actual "overshoot." The Scaled Composites
press release gives a maximum altitude of 328,491 feet, which is
100.124257 KM. Now the "boundary" is legally at 100 KM, so he actually
overshot by 124.257 M, or 407.667651 feet, which would give just under 0.1
second more.

Of course the "boundary" is rather arbitrary. 100 Km is just a nice round
number.