111–120 of 149 posts
Almost 5 million people watching live now. Compare to presidential debate with 67 million viewers - not bad!
The debate should have taken place suspended from a weather balloon.
Could someone explain to me whether this is a marketing stunt and nothing more or whether there is some substance behind this? Put another way: Will any scientists or engineers (at least potentially) learn something interesting from this? It's cool no matter what, but it would be even cooler if there were some substance behind it.
50 years ago today humans went faster than the speed of sound for the very first time. Now we're slightly jaded where we think there's nothing to learn by having a human fall faster than the speed of sound in a suit?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Kittinger is the man walking Felix through the procedures. This is the Dynamic Duo of high altitude jumping. I felt a shiver listening to them, this is a day I think I will tell my children about. p.s. Kittinger is 84!
Looks like the freefall duration record wasn't beaten :(
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're going to be spending money to sell their sugary beverage one way or another, but it's cool they're doing it in a way that will advance the state of science rather than just polluting the world with more billboard ads.
But, will it advance the state of science? Maybe if he actually goes to Mach 1 that could prove interesting but otherwise the "science" part of that whole thing makes me cringe. For example they put the "edge of space" at 36km (it's actually usually considered to be at ~100km), there is no explanation for such gross errors except that they want to market the crap out of this.
To Red Bull: fix your coverage next time! Your website and Twitter feeds weren't really ever carrying the latest information pre-launch, and your blog was 24 hours out-of-date whenever I checked. (Also YouTube was buffering, it wasn't my connection). Bit of a mess from the PR-masters imo.
I'm going to go buy a Red Bull now.
All in the name of selling sugary sodas. Noble.
This is nothing new, e.g. Student's T-distribution came out of statistical research financed by a beer company ( http://www.mlive.com/kalamabrew/index.ssf/2009/03/because_of... ).
Could someone explain to me whether this is a marketing stunt and nothing more or whether there is some substance behind this? Put another way: Will any scientists or engineers (at least potentially) learn something interesting from this? It's cool no matter what, but it would be even cooler if there were some substance behind it.
The military has also looked at using suborbital rockets to transport special forces hundreds of miles in a few minutes, then deploy them high over a hotspot quickly. So it could conceivably be useful for those purposes as well. (To be clear, these are just forward-looking conceptual studies. I'm not saying the military has these vehicles ready to go or anything like that).
Lastly, these guys are innovating on spacesuits design, which has been badly needed. Only a handful of spacesuit designs have ever been built and actually used in practice, and they were built by government entities. We're talking the slowest, most ponderous development cycles imaginable. NASA is still essentially using the same spacesuits on the space station that they first used with the shuttle in the early 1980's. Think about how many gains we've made in materials since then. The more suits we can build, test in the wild, and iterate on the better.
To Red Bull: fix your coverage next time! Your website and Twitter feeds weren't really ever carrying the latest information pre-launch, and your blog was 24 hours out-of-date whenever I checked. (Also YouTube was buffering, it wasn't my connection). Bit of a mess from the PR-masters imo.
Are you positive it wasn't your connection? It worked perfectly for me, as well as (seemingly) quite a few others. I'm going to go buy a Red Bull now.
To Red Bull: fix your coverage next time! Your website and Twitter feeds weren't really ever carrying the latest information pre-launch, and your blog was 24 hours out-of-date whenever I checked. (Also YouTube was buffering, it wasn't my connection). Bit of a mess from the PR-masters imo.
Are you positive it wasn't your connection? It worked perfectly for me, as well as (seemingly) quite a few others. I'm going to go buy a Red Bull now.
How much bandwidth do 5.4 mio viewers consume? Can someone give me a number?