Supersonic free fall from 120,000 feet live at 8:30AM EST

http://www.redbullstratos.com/live/

by flipstewart • 14 years ago

115 61 14 years ago

dutchbrit• 14 years ago

Can someone explain the physics behind this?

damian2000• 14 years ago

There's a bit of detail here from his jump in July at 90,000 ft ... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2178943/Felix...

nicholassmith3• 14 years ago

Lots of the science was broken down over at Wired: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/stratos-space-jump...

davidw3• 14 years ago

Another silly question might be: won't he "burn up on reentry"? Clearly, he's falling from a different altitude than a rocket, and starting from 0, but what are the actual numbers like?

dantiberian• 14 years ago

This year has been really great for awesome space events. Mars, 2 SpaceX missions, now this. I hope this is just a taste of things to come.

flipstewart2• 14 years ago

We went to the moon, what, 40 years ago? It's about time we started living in the space age.

draven• 14 years ago

There are precedents, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger for other crazy skydives

atlbeer• 14 years ago

He's working on the project as a consultant

"The record is currently held by Col. Joe Kittinger, who in 1960 jumped from 102,800 feet as part of a U.S. Air Force mission. On this attempt, 52 years later, Kittinger is a consultant and mentor.

He has also been giving Baumgartner advice on what to expect. For example, he described what it feels like to fall through space when there is so little air: "There's no way you can tell how fast you're going, because there's no visual cues."

But Kittinger rejects any suggestion that he is jealous that Baumgartner is poised to beat his record.

"Oh no. I'm delighted," he told CNN recently. "He's advancing science, and he'll do a great job."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/09/us/skydiver-record-attempt/ind...

yotsechan• 14 years ago

He also did an IAmA in support of the project a few weeks ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/yc1ke/i_am_joe_kitting...

mseebach2• 14 years ago

You have to be cut from a particular bitter length of cloth to be jealous over only keeping your world record for 52 years.

aidos• 14 years ago

Have a read of his Excelsior I jump [0], the near fatal 60,000 foot jump that was the precursor to the 102,000 foot one. Incredible.

[0] http://stratocat.com.ar/artics/excelsior-e.htm

brudgers• 14 years ago

Kittenger was just pushing the envelop as a test pilot. The fact that he survived shows how uncrazy his approach was. When I was growing up in Orlando, he was best known locally as the skywriter for Rosey O' Grady's - he would go up just about every afternoon during tourist season.

gadders• 14 years ago

Not to take anything away from Felix, but that jump with 50 year old technology seems even more impressive.

lloyddobbler2• 14 years ago

As others have mentioned, Kittinger isn't "jealous" - in fact, he doesn't look at what he did as setting a "record," per se.

Kittinger's jumps were done as part of Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior, two U.S. military projects launched in the late 1950's (before the Gemini space program) to test whether a bailout system for astronauts could work. Kittinger had made a few military skydives, but it was an important fact that he wasn't a skydiver (as none of the Gemini astronauts would be skydivers, and know how to fly their bodies in freefall). The bailout system they were building had to be usable by even inexperienced pilots.

So Joe has often said he wasn't going up to set a record - and he hates it when people focus on that. He was just doing his job, trying to make sure the astronauts had a safe out on their way to set history. (In his view, it was only an coincidence that he set history himself along the way).

chrisboesing• 14 years ago

Maybe a little off topic:

Red Bull's marketing is impeccable. They started out with all the actionsport athletes and moved upstream to more mainstream, and I guess, more expensive sports (two Formula 1 teams, more soccer teams than I can count), while still doing these crazy things. From Parcours in Santorini, to Air Races all over the world. Seems like every crazy sporting event is sponsored by Red Bull.

I think these have allowed them to be still seen as "hip" and not just selling sugar water like Coca Cola.

franze• 14 years ago

and like all good things, it started by accident. (i got this story from one of their marketing managers) once upon a time someone at the formula 1 won a race. and the masterchief (or however the bosses of the racing teams are called) drank a red bull instead of champagne during the victory interview.

next day red bull was sold out in austria (which was their main market at that time)

they just took it from there.

kahawe• 14 years ago

> next day red bull was sold out in austria (which was there main markets at that time)

This is also where the Western version of Red Bull is from. Originally it was an energy drink in Thailand and an Austrian partnered up with the Thai owner, adapted it to suit the Western palate and ever since then they have been going incredibly strong and long survived all energy-drink competitors that shortly popped up during the 90s.

Mateschitz's and Yoovidhya's net worth is about 5 billion each.

I don't think there is any important extreme sport event they are not involved in. Their annual "Flugtag" is legendary here in Austria! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Flugtag

Piskvorrr2• 14 years ago

"It was an accident," quoth their marketing manager. Yeah, riiiiiiiiight.

yitchelle• 14 years ago

Hmm.. OK.. And how many free [insert kick back item here] will this marketing fellow get for this little effort :-?

Nevertheless, what a marketing effort! They really nailed this one.

freehunter• 14 years ago

As if winning a Formula 1 race isn't enough of a rush, you need some caffeine afterwards too!

arethuza• 14 years ago

There are cases where smaller companies with good marketing can out sell Coca Cola in local markets - a good example being Irn Bru:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irn-Bru

Trezoid• 14 years ago

Redbull: Sponsoring everything cool.

It is, absolutely, a genius marketing strategy. Their primary demographic just happens to be the kinds of people who watch insane sports. Brand recognition from those events is huge, and then people just happen to drop their brand-name when talking about the events to other people.

Probably cheaper in the long-run than trying to compete with someone like Coca Cola in more traditional campaigns, and way more effective.

lloyddobbler2• 14 years ago

Agreed.

And like Coke and Kleenex, through sheer brand awareness, they've achieved that rare feat in which a company's brand becomes synonymous with an object. In conversation throughout the world,

Soft Drink = "Coke" Tissue = "Kleenex" Energy Drink = "Red Bull"

mmaunder2• 14 years ago

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-dietrich-mateschitz-ignor...

nicholassmith3• 14 years ago

Yep, they've nailed the brand image without a doubt. Everything they do is to go "This isn't your dads soft drink", and it seems to have worked pretty well.

Also very cool, they own their own aerobatics team called The Flying Bulls, and they have a B25 bomber. Why? Because they can, and that's awesome.

andyv88• 14 years ago

The tech to shoot and transmit this whole event live is almost as incredible as the event itself

http://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/cameras-communicati...

mmaunder2• 14 years ago

Nitpick re "edge of space": Low earth orbit starts at around 160 km and orbits decay rapidly below 200 km. This is 36 km altitude. But what I think most people miss is that to "be in space" the way most people think about space you'll need to enter orbit which means that once you get up to 160+ km altitude you need to go sideways at roughly 24 times the speed of sound - and then you're in orbit. Then when you're all done having your fun you need to take all that orbital energy and do something with it. The best idea so far is to use it to burn up a heat shield. This business of going vertical a little higher than jets and a lot lower than satellites is a little pretentious. But it's fun and it's Red Bull so who cares!!

Retric• 14 years ago

Only a small fraction of orbital energy ends up burning the heat shield, most of it simply heats the air and creates a downdraft / wake.

piaskal• 14 years ago

While there isn't anything special marking the edge of space, the generally accepted definition is 100km https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_space

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_sovereignty

Makes me interested to see what the treaties say as I'd be surprised it no one thought to limit the control of countries to allow satellites to pass without permission or allow space vehicles in general.

Though as you point out there is the Karman line convention.

adastra• 14 years ago

I'm not aware of any organization that determines being "in space" by velocity -- the FAI as well as the US DoD, NASA, and the FAA all go solely by altitude.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "the way most people think about space". The first American in space, Alan Shepard, flew a suborbital mission. I don't think you'll find many people who would argue he wasn't in space.

To be clear, there is no universally-agreed upon definition of space, let alone "the edge of space". There is no official definition of space in US law or policy. The NASA, the FAA, and the Air Force definitions (100km, 100km, 50 miles respectively) are only used for the purposes of awarding astronaut wings.

Personally, I'm fine with them calling it the edge of space to get more public attention to the mission, and they can get away with it because the cameras will show black sky and the curvature of the earth.

mschonfeld• 14 years ago

Actually, its at 9:30AM EST...

ColinWright• 14 years ago

Is the web site overwhelmed? I'm getting "Loading Javascript" messages, but nothing is happening.

    We're just trying to load the data for you. If you
    don't have JavaScript enabled in your browser for
    this site, please switch it on and refresh the page
    in order to view the Live Jump experience.

It would be nice to know if it's working for other people.

Added in edit: OK - on weather hold - due off an hour from now.

nicholassmith3• 14 years ago

The YouTube live view seems like it's struggling to cope with the demand, keeps stalling or failing to load for me.

keltex• 14 years ago

http://youtube.com/embed/vkJ5ItzE

anu_gupta• 14 years ago

Direct link to the live YouTube stream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=vkJ5ItzEq3M#!

rjsamson• 14 years ago

Looks like they've got a weather hold until 8am Mountain Time (10am Eastern)

NelsonMinar• 14 years ago

While we're waiting for the weather to clear, you can watch nicely edited footage of Kittinger's 1960 record of 100,000 feet; it's at the start of the Boards of Canada video for Dayvan Cowboy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2zKARkpDW4

molmalo• 14 years ago

Aborted for today, due to too much wind.

jchung• 14 years ago

Aborted.

toufka• 14 years ago

And it's aborted; 'Gusty winds'.

nodesocket• 14 years ago

Just aborted due to high winds. They are going to retry tomorrow.

jayp08• 14 years ago

tomorrow also looks unlikely...no confirmation yet about tomorrow's jump as of now.

keeptrying• 14 years ago

Speechless ...

Supersonic free fall from 120,000 feet live at 8:30AM EST

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