← When Yeager Eased Through the Sound Barrier

RedBull’s Stratos Stunt

Posted on October 16, 2012 by asteitel

Baumgartner, covered in RedBull logos, begins his fall at just over 128,000 feet. Credit: Handout/Getty Images via The Guardian

According to YouTube, eight million people watched Felix Baumgartner’s high altitude jump on Sunday morning. It was exciting and death-defying, but at the end of the day it was a just an elaborate publicity stunt that will likely see RedBull sales skyrocket this month. But I’d argue that the event wasn’tentirely a success from a publicity standpoint. RedBull, who sponsored the jump, wasted an incredible opportunity. It had  an eight million person audience captivated, but did nothing to teach that audience about the context behind Baumgartner’s jump. Joe Kittinger’s 1960 jump was amazing, the heritage behind these types of tests is fascinating, but without any context the audience just saw a daredevil break a record for record-breaking’s sake.

I realize I sound like an irritated historian, but I also have a background (albeit a brief one) in publicity. Not taking advantage of an opportunity to teach eight million people a few awesome things about science is a terrible waste, from an historian’s standpoint and a public relation’s standpoint.

What ever else he may be, Baumgartner is definitely agood face for RedBull. Credit: Rex

A little background first. Austrian-born Baumgartner started skydiving at 16. He perfected the art and in 1988 began performing skydiving exhibitions for Red Bull. His adventurous spirit and RedBull’s out-of-the-box thinking meshed well, sparking a now decades-long collaboration. The idea for a free fall from the stratosphere, a planned altitude of 120,000 feet, was conceived in 2005. It was finally named The RedBull Stratos project, and its goal was defined as transcending “human limits that have existed for 50 years.”

Ostensibly, the jump was designed to expand the boundaries of human flight. More concrete goals listed on the project’s website include: developing new spacesuits with enhanced mobility and visual clarity to assist in “passenger/crew exit from space;” developing protocols for exposure to high altitude and high acceleration environments; exploring the effects of supersonic acceleration and deceleration on the human body; and testing the latest innovations in parachute systems.

The International Space Station, which you can’t jump out of. Credit: NASA

It’s not entirely clear what applications this data would have, like the research on “passenger/crew exit from space.” The morning of the jump, people asked me whether the point was to prove that astronauts could jump from the International Space Station in an emergency. It wasn’t. Baumgartner’s 128,000 foot altitude (he overshot his mark) is only about 24 miles; the ISS orbits at an altitude of about 200 miles. Not to mention the astronauts on the ISS are weightless because they’re falling around the Earth at the same rate as the station, and that wouldn’t change if they stepped outside. It’s also unclear what other high altitude/high acceleration and supersonic environments in which people would find themselves that we need data on survival. Yes, there may have been some interesting data gathered from the jump, but it’s not enough to classify the stunt as any kind of research program.

But what bothered me the most is how RedBull presented the jump. Saying that the Stratos project was designed to “transcend human limits that have existed for 50 years” is a good tagline but it’s vague. Jumping from 24 miles doesn’t push human limits so much as technological limits. Technology kept Baumgartner alive during his ascent, protected him from the harsh environment during the fall, and slowed him to a soft landing. The other thing that stands out in the tagline is its implication that we haven’t learned anything about surviving in these types of extreme environments since 1962. Test pilots and astronauts in the 1960s were subjected to excessive G-forces, relied on intricate life support systems throughout missions, and were spared exposure to the vacuum of space by spacesuits.

A schematic showing the layers of Earth’s atmosphere. The stratosphere isn’t quite space. Credit: NASA

Which brings up another problem with RedBull’s promotion of the Stratos jump. It was touted as being a jump from space, but 24 miles isn’t space. There’s no clear limit where the atmosphere ends and space begins, but the general consensus is that it’s around the 62 mile mark. NASA, which was established to run the space game in 1958, has awarded astronaut wings to pilots who’ve flown higher than 50 miles. Calling the Stratos jump a jump from space is just not true, and unfortunately with eight million people watching those eight million people now have a very wrong idea about where space starts.

This was far from the only misinformation associated with the event. RedBull did a terrible job at presenting Kittinger’s 1960 jump. A real shame ,especially since Kittinger was Baumgartner’s capcom. From the RedBull Stratos website:

Joe’s record jump from 102,800 ft in 1960 was during a time when no one knew if a human could survive a jump from the edge of space… Although researching extremes was part of the program’s goals, setting records wasn’t the mission’s purpose. Joe ascended in [a] helium balloon launched from the back of a truck. He wore a pressurized suit on the way up in an open, unpressurized gondola. Scientific data captured from Joe’s jump was shared with U.S. research personnel for development of the space program.

This description isn’t just wrong, it completely ignores the history behind Kittinger’s jump.

Captain Mel Apt in the cockpit of the X-2 in 1956. He became the first man to fly faster than Mach 3 in this aircraft, but lost control at high altitude. He ejected, but the complicated system failed and he was killed on this record flight. The U.S. Air Force needed to stop this from happening again. Credit: United States Air Force

In the 1960s, pilots were pushing the envelope of supersonic flight at high altitudes. But this was a dangerous approach. While it’s easy to fly fast in the thin upper atmosphere it’s harder to control an aircraft. With no air for control surfaces to push against, aircraft tend to tumble, and when aircraft tumble pilots tend to eject. Tests with dummies showed that when falling from high altitudes, human bodies tended to get into a flat spin. It would be like rolling down a hill really fast but without the hill, and the G-forces would certainly be fatal. The Air Force needed a way to stabilize a pilot from a high altitude ejection, and Francis F. Beaupre had a sequential parachute that would do just that. Kittinger jumped from 102,800 feet in 1960 as part of Project Excelsior to prove that Beaupre’s parachute would work. It did, the Air Force had data and a healthy Kittinger as evidence, and the project ended. There was no live video of his jump. He was a Captain in the Air Force, and he jumped from 102,800 feet for Captain’s pay to complete a mission.

The full story behind Kittinger’s jump is a fascinating one. It pulls together classic themes like 1960s test pilots’ egos, their relationships with their aircraft, the push from atmospheric flight to spaceflight, and the era where men were probing unknowns because they were unknown.

Joe Kittinger in his U.S. Air Force days. Credit: United States Air Force

During Baumgartner’s more than two hour long ascent to jump altitude, RedBull could have told Kittinger’s story. The announcer could have talked about the technology keeping Baumgartner alive, what made his suit different or special, told us how he was able to break the sound barrier in a free fall, talked about problems like aerodynamic heating in atmospheric entry. Instead, RedBull held an audience captive and offered them almost nothing but shots of Baumgartner in a suit and Kittinger at the capcom console. Even when the announcer talked about the possibility of Baumgarner entering a spin during his fall, he failed to mention the parallel that Kittinger had proved the graduated parachute system that stabilized a pilot’s fall. He didn’t even mention that Baumgartner’s supersonic jump came on the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager’s first supersonic flight.

RedBull Stratos was an incredible opportunity to teach a huge audience about the past and future exploration of high altitudes and space. Having a scientist or historian narrating the jump would have brought a level of prestige to the event. It could have been less of a publicity stunt and more of an event designed to return scientific data that just happened to be sponsored by a corporation.

I can’t help but think this Stratos jump could have been more powerful and interesting had we learned the context behind the mission. In the end, I have to wonder how much we’re gaining if the public is excited by space exploration but doesn’t understand why it matters or the technology behind it.

The view as Kittinger jumped from the gondola at 102,800 feet in 1960. It’s a great picture, made more powerful knowing what Kittinger was out to prove and how rudimentary (by today’s standards) the precautions were. A leak in his suit caused his right hand to swell painfully during the ascent, but he didn’t say anything for fear the jump would be cancelled. Credit: United States Air Force

Share this:

This entry was posted in History of Space Science and tagged Felix Baumgartner, Free Fall, Joe Kittinger, Jump, Mel Apt, NASA, Project Excelsior, RedBull, RedBull Stratos, Skydive, Stratosphere, Stunt, US Air Force. Bookmark thepermalink.

← When Yeager Eased Through the Sound Barrier