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Best I could find in my physics book is that pressure decreases exponentially as you go up in altitude. At a height of about 5.5km (18,000 ft), the air pressure is half its value at sea level. If we go up another 5.5km to 11km, the pressure is again halved so that it is one- fourth its value at sea level, and so on.
My trusty TI-83 tells me the regression equation (from 5 data points) for pressure due to altitude is:
P=101.3*0.882^h
P is pressure in kPa (kilopascals)
h is height in Km
I'm sure there is a much easier way to calculate these things, but it was pathetically fun deriving this. Hope it helps.
Good rule of thumb I've heard is that cars lose 3% of their total HP for every 1000 feet gain in elevation.
-Alex-
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