Felix who?

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

Seriously? No fanfare, nothing. Dude just bested his jump by 8000 feet.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/24/7062023/alan-eustace-google-vp-free-fall-parachute-jump-world-record

NYT Science @nytimesscience
A @Google executive, Alan Eustace, now has highest free-fall parachute jump record: 136,362 ft. @markoff piece shortly.

NYT Science @nytimesscience
Official height from U.S. Parachute Assn measured at 135,908 feet

Faust · Wakeboarder.Commie Joined: 20 May 2005 Posts: 1496

Wow haha sweet, hurrah for engineers Cool

ohsix · Posted: Oct 24, 2014 12:49 pm Post subject:

The article makes it sound as if this was self-funded. He should have called Monster on Monday for some sponsorship money.

I kind of respect the guy for keeping this quiet which is quite opposite the Felix/Red Bull approach, but I know Red Bull has a business to run and that there was no reason for them not to use it as an ad campaign. I wonder how much Eustace' team learned from the Red Bull jump. I can't imagine it's much tougher to jump from 136,000 ft vs. 128,000.

LFADAM · Posted: Oct 24, 2014 2:01 pm Post subject:

This cracks me up. It kind of sucks in a way, because Felix's jump was so epic and I have cool memories of watching it, but apparently it's really not that big of a deal. (OK sure, it is, but an old computer engineer can do it-far from an elite athlete or ultra-skilled jumper)

I found it interesting they claim their approach was "much simpler" than Red Bull's. I wonder how that is and why Red Bull didn't see that with their years of research+building a capsule, etc.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

LFADAM, from what I've seen they didn't go all out and build a capsule, and all that jazz. They just put him in a space-suit, with plenty of O2, and strapped him to a lifting balloon.

It does say they used a different approach to the chute deployment so there was little to no chance it might get tangled when it opened.

jjaszkow · Posted: Oct 25, 2014 2:09 pm Post subject:

The space suit didn't even have cooling so Eustace had to be very careful to not overheat. Apparently he was signaling his ground crew by wiggling his legs to minimize heat and fog generation. Amazing effort by this guy.

Faust · Wakeboarder.Commie Joined: 20 May 2005 Posts: 1496

LFADAM · Posted: Oct 27, 2014 8:36 pm Post subject:

Faust, I understand it's quite a feat. It's just the fact that an old computer engineer did it that takes away from the grandeur in my mind.

If an old computer engineer landed a 1080 on a wakeboard, it would lose a little bit of its luster don't you think?

jjaszkow, pretty crazy. When I read that though, all I could think was "couldn't they have come up with a better solution? Laughing

vette74 · Posted: Oct 28, 2014 5:54 am Post subject:

I am glad the record was broken. I watched the Discovery channel special after Felix did his jump and I lost a LOT of respect for him. Most of the delays (I think it was over a year) were because of Felix. He backed out a couple of times, went into depression. He also wanted to jump out way early but Joe talked him into waiting ect. They did a really good job covering this up during the live broadcast.