'Edge of Space' Skydiver Felix Baumgartner Dies in Paragliding Accident (go.com) 33
Felix Baumgartner has died. He was 56.
In 2012 Slashdot extensively covered the skydiver's "leap from the edge of space." ABC News remembers it as a Red Bull-financed stunt that involved "diving 24 miles from the edge of space, in a plummet that reached a speed of more than 500 mph." Baumgartner recalled the legendary jump in the documentary, "Space Jump," and said, "I was the first human being outside of an aircraft breaking the speed of sound and the history books. Nobody remembers the second one...."
Baumgartner, also known as "Fearless Felix," accomplished many records in his career, including setting the world record for highest parachute jump atop the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, flying across the English Channel in a wingsuit in 2003, and base jumping from the 85-foot arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil in 2007.
"Baumgartner's altitude record stood for two years," remembers the Los Angeles Times, "until Google executive Alan Eustace set new marks for the highest free-fall jump and greatest free-fall distance."
They report that Baumgartner died Thursday "while engaged in a far less intense activity, crashing into the side of a hotel swimming pool while paragliding in Porto Sant Elpidio, a town on central Italy's eastern coast." More details from the Associated Press: "It is a destiny that is very hard to comprehend for a man who has broke all kinds of records, who has been an icon of flight, and who traveled through space," Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella told The Associated Press.Ciarpella said that Baumgartner had been in the area on vacation, and that investigators believed he may have fallen ill during the fatal flight... Baumgartner, a former Austrian military parachutist, made thousands of jumps from planes, bridges, skyscrapers and famed landmarks...
ABC News remembers that in 2022 Baumgartner wrote in Newsweek that "Since I was a little kid, I've always looked up to people who left a footprint on this planet... now I think I have left a footprint...
"I believe big dreamers always win."
In 2012 Slashdot extensively covered the skydiver's "leap from the edge of space." ABC News remembers it as a Red Bull-financed stunt that involved "diving 24 miles from the edge of space, in a plummet that reached a speed of more than 500 mph." Baumgartner recalled the legendary jump in the documentary, "Space Jump," and said, "I was the first human being outside of an aircraft breaking the speed of sound and the history books. Nobody remembers the second one...."
Baumgartner, also known as "Fearless Felix," accomplished many records in his career, including setting the world record for highest parachute jump atop the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, flying across the English Channel in a wingsuit in 2003, and base jumping from the 85-foot arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil in 2007.
"Baumgartner's altitude record stood for two years," remembers the Los Angeles Times, "until Google executive Alan Eustace set new marks for the highest free-fall jump and greatest free-fall distance."
They report that Baumgartner died Thursday "while engaged in a far less intense activity, crashing into the side of a hotel swimming pool while paragliding in Porto Sant Elpidio, a town on central Italy's eastern coast." More details from the Associated Press: "It is a destiny that is very hard to comprehend for a man who has broke all kinds of records, who has been an icon of flight, and who traveled through space," Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella told The Associated Press.Ciarpella said that Baumgartner had been in the area on vacation, and that investigators believed he may have fallen ill during the fatal flight... Baumgartner, a former Austrian military parachutist, made thousands of jumps from planes, bridges, skyscrapers and famed landmarks...
ABC News remembers that in 2022 Baumgartner wrote in Newsweek that "Since I was a little kid, I've always looked up to people who left a footprint on this planet... now I think I have left a footprint...
"I believe big dreamers always win."
We need more people like him (Score:4, Interesting)
Without these people who dare to push the boundary, we'd hardly advance as a species. We need people who want to do things bigger.
Re:We need more people like him (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember watching it live - it seemed like he wasn't going to jump - but he did and spun out of control for a while - and yea he landed.
Doing something silly to advertise an energy drink and almost die... did not help us "advance as a species" in my humble opinion
That being said - my condolences to any family or friend that might see this.
Re: We need more people like him (Score:4)
It's the planning, and designing the equipment to let the jump happen.
Without the jump, all that wouldn't have happened (for a while at least).
Him stepping up, and actually doing it, advanced knowledge and engineering, proving that it could be done. Not a huge advance, but definitely a tiptoe in a new direction.
Re: (Score:3)
A few things. But I'll mention because it's inspiration by resurrecting in us the human spirit of adventure We need that, it is what will differentiate us from robots. As robots achieve AGI over the coming years, we'll need to know who we are as a species. That we're a feeling species, in addition to thinking. A robot too can jump like that from the stratosphere .. but only if necessary, and as instructed. A human has to overcome fear to do it (alongside other things like setbacks, planning, procrastination
Re: (Score:1)
He advanced us as a species by eliminating himself from the gene pool.
Re: (Score:2)
TFS didn't say (or I didn't notice) if he'd had children or not. Without knowing that datum, you can't say whether or not he has been removed from the gene pool.
Re: (Score:2)
Just curious .. have you compared his achievements to yours?
Re: (Score:2)
He advanced us as a species by eliminating himself from the gene pool.
What a harsh thing to post, asshole. Go back to Reddit you fucking douchebag.
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, OP! Even Goatse thinks you're a giant asshole!
Re: (Score:3)
Not sure what his jump did to help us "advance as a species"
Not sure why you think setting not one but three new records at once doesn't count, but there was also a very significant amount of R&D that went into the Stratos project to make it happen. This wasn't just some dude who jumped out of a plane, we learned a lot during the process of him jumping out of his capsule.
Indeed being the first human to break the sound barrier without being inside a protective solid shell was a big unknown as well which is why he was heavily strapped with sensors and had extensiv
Re: We need more people like him (Score:2)
What we need are people who take calculated risks. Not just do risky things for the lulz. There is overlap of course, but there is a very substantive difference between taking a joyride and piloting the moon lander.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't jump off a balloon at 100,000 feet without a lot of calculation. Baumgartner was the spam in the can but there are whole teams behind these things, from figuring out whether it's possible to designing the spacesuit that kept him alive.
Re: (Score:2)
No, we absolutely do NOT.
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Re: (Score:2)
FAFO
Re: (Score:2)
That's what Darwin would say?
Actually not a bad FP, but I was looking for the jokes. Darwin Award as low-hanging fruit, though he might not deserve one. He didn't take any of his descendants with him, and he may well have reproduced quite successfully based on this "daredevil" reputation.
Me? I am skeptical that we need more people like him. Pushing meaningless boundaries to get listed in the Guinness book is not a major contribution to human civilization. I do think we do need some boundary pushers, but tha
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you retarded?
Re: (Score:2)
Why I always stuck to hang gliding. (Score:3)
Paragliders are much easier to learn to fly and carry between sites. That's why they are more popular than hang gliders.
The issue is that they present risks that other flying wings do not. The wing collapses through turbulence or mismanagement. Or a botched stunt.
They very fact that paragliders are "easy" makes them more dangerous. There is more opportunity for an inexperienced pilot to get into situations where they don't even understand the risk they are taking. One death I observed was simply due to the guy flying above terrain where he should not have been.
This guy was an adrenaline junkie. The very kind of guy who is attracted to aviation and the last kind of guy who should be practicing it. Paid the price for it, and paraglider flying is pretty much e perfect legal tender for that kind of transaction. That is all.
Re: (Score:3)
Paragliders: the only aircraft that you assemble while you're taking off.
Lots of assumptions. He completed a lot of flights, many of them more carefully planned than anything most of us have ever done, flying or otherwise. He died on what sounds like a pleasure flight and "fell ill while flying" might be Italian police speculation for "had a heart attack."
Re: (Score:2)
This guy was an adrenaline junkie. The very kind of guy who is attracted to aviation and the last kind of guy who should be practicing it.
Freak accidents happen, and all you can do is shit on someone who will have forgotten more about flying in his life than you could ever possibly hope to learn. Did your mother never tell you if you have nothing nice to say, don't say it at all?
Re: (Score:2)
This guy was an adrenaline junkie. The very kind of guy who is attracted to aviation and the last kind of guy who should be practicing it.
Freak accidents happen, and all you can do is shit on someone who will have forgotten more about flying in his life than you could ever possibly hope to learn. Did your mother never tell you if you have nothing nice to say, don't say it at all?
Freak accidents happen, yes. Preventable incidents also happen. It is unclear which of this this was. Maybe he just had a stroke mid-air. Maybe he tried something "new". We don't know. What we do know is that he was at the extreme edge of the category of people who frequently try something "new". That isn't always as admirable as one might think.
Also. The mother thing. That is now and has always been bad advice. See health-code violations at a restaurant? Just don't leave a review... as opposed
Re: (Score:2)
Everything is preventable when you eliminated all risk from your life. Stay in bed. The people die just getting out of it in the morning. There's a risk. What is being done here is wild speculation both as to the nature of the incident as well as to the character of the deceased. Disgusting.
Re: (Score:2)
Everything is preventable when you eliminated all risk from your life. Stay in bed.
Yes. Because only accepting literal zero risk activity is totally the same as being an risk-seeker of such exceptional magnitude that they are newsworthy. Right.
The people die just getting out of it in the morning. There's a risk. What is being done here is wild speculation both as to the nature of the incident as well as to the character of the deceased. Disgusting.
I mean... there's no speculation as to the character of the dude. That's documented and he wasn't shy about the publicity either. As for speculation about the nature of the fatal risky activity that the OP pointed out - from personal experience - to be among the riskier in its category... well... sort of. Pointing out the nature of the activity
Par for the course for paragliding (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He left a footprint...on the swimming pool (Score:2)
He died Thursday "while engaged in a far less intense activity, crashing into the side of a hotel swimming pool while paragliding"
Died in a "routine" activity. (Score:5, Interesting)
As the Mountain Rescue at Chamonix say, "tous les meilleurs alpinistes sont tuées en rapelles". (For the linguistically challenged, "all the best alpinists are killed abseiling".)
It's so common - someone who regularly pushes their sport to the bleeding edge ... dies in a routine bit of entertainment. Or work - I remember the shock when Jochen Hausenmeyer (the eponymous in the "Dead Man's Handshake" incident of the mid-70s of cave diving) was killed on a routine commercial dive some time ... late '90s was it? Not even involving decco as I heard it.
Vale.
Live by the sword (Score:2)
Klingons would approve.
Or probably not. They 'd probably say diving out of a balloon 23 km above the surface is for cissies.
Lol (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Like stupid Steve Irwin dying from a Stingray
In Caelum Liberum (Score:2)
Clear skies, Felix. I hope you're still falling, fast and free, somewhere out there.