“Red Bull gives you wings” – in this case, it most certainly does. Forget football games or NASCAR races, Red Bull decides to sponsor a skydive…from space. To think that I was excited when I found out Virgin was giving out a trip to space as part of their frequent flyers program (actually, that’s still quite exciting). This seems like insanity.
Last Sunday, over 8 million people tuned into YouTube’s 2 hours livestream to watch the Red Bull Stratos Mission take Felix Baumgartner to the of edge space and back. The Dutch daredevil successfully dropped through the sound barrier last Sunday with a 24-mile freefall from the edge of space – that is without doubt a world record breaker.
When I was standing there on top of the world so humble, you are not thinking about breaking records. I was thinking about coming back alive. You do not want to die in front of your parents and all these people….I thought “please God, don’t let me down.” – Felix Baumgartner
The numbers:
Exit altitude: 128,100 ft
Freefall time: 4 minutes 20 seconds
Freefall distance: 119,846 ft
Velocity: 373 metres per second
To date, the jump has received over $100 million worth of media coverage for Red Bull world-wide. According to the Telegraph, “[Baumgartner] didn’t just break speed of sound. He smashed it.” An impressive feat!
via The Telegraph (and a whole bunch of other sites)
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