A senior vice president of Google, Alan Eustace, 57, has broken Felix Baumgartner's 127,852-feet altitude record, set in 2012, with the new highest free fall to Earth (short video) at 135,890 feet. While Baumgartner's feat was funded by Red Bull, Eustace's attempt was largely self-funded.
On Friday morning, Pacific time, Google's SVP of Knowledge Alan Eustace rode a helium-filled balloon to more than 135,000 feet above the deserts of Roswell, New Mexico, in a specially designed space suit before firing a small explosive charge and cutting himself lose for free fall.
Eustace didn't bother with the capsule: he simply strapped himself under the balloon with a GoPro camera attached to his suit, and only had a small team of advisers to help him make the jump. Google offered to fund the attempt, but Eustace paid for it himself so that it could be done without publicity until after the event.
Mr. Eustace was carried aloft without the aid of the sophisticated capsule used by Mr. Baumgartner or millions of dollars in sponsorship money. Instead, Mr. Eustace planned his jump in secrecy, working for almost three years with a small group of technologists skilled in spacesuit design, life-support systems, and parachute and balloon technology.
After he decided to pursue the project in 2011, Mr. Eustace was introduced to Taber MacCallum, one of the founding members of the Biosphere 2 project, an artificial closed ecosystem built to explore concepts such as space colonization. Mr. Eustace had decided to pursue a simpler approach than Mr. Baumgartner's.
He asked Mr. MacCallum's company, Paragon Space Development Corporation, to create a life-support system to make it possible for him to breathe pure oxygen in a pressure suit during his ascent and fall.
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Saturday October 25 2014, @12:17PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @12:29PM
I suppose the are was not chosen solely for its suitability as a landing zone. Weather balloons anyone?
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Saturday October 25 2014, @12:30PM
Without the fanfare and publicity that accompanied Felix Baumgartner's jump, Alan Eustace accomplished more. Wonderful !
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @01:59PM
Maybe instead of doing crap like this, Google's "SVP of Knowledge" should instead investigate why the new Google Maps is so goddamn shitty.
Here we have a product that has worked fine for many years. It did its job just great. Then the UI was redone, and the product was ruined. Maps that used to load quickly now show as fuzzy blocks. The whole UI is so fucking slow to load and render now. Streetview is busted in Firefox; you can't actually move around once at street level because it just shows a black screen. What's even more confusing is that this shitty new version hasn't been rolled back yet.
Clearly this is the kind of investigation that's beyond mere mortals. We need somebody like an "SVP of Knowledge" to figure out just what the fuck went wrong here.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Sunday October 26 2014, @12:12AM
Please mod parent up (my points just expired a few minutes ago).
I have the same problems with the new-ish Google Map interface.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday October 26 2014, @09:21PM
It works fine in FF. Your noscript is blocking ggpht.com
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @02:48PM
Here, let me fix that headline for you:
Headline: "Employer Lets Rich Guy Take Time Off To Do Attention-Getting Stunt"
Unwritten subtext: "Google is led by Renaissance Men"
He's SOOOO brave. And he's a "computer scientist", too! AND an executive.
Yawn.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:40PM
You're the brave one, Anonymous Coward. A true hero.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @03:20PM
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Saturday October 25 2014, @08:34PM
Wake me up when one of these guys decides to do himself in this way - no suit, no oxygen tank, whatever ... just a 130,000 face plant. Might be interesting for science.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey