What are you afraid of?
Spiders creep out some people. Think about it: eight legs to walk on you, eight eyes to spy on you.
Many people are afraid of heights to the extent they fear being lifted off the ground by their friends, because who knows what will happen if they were to fall.
Felix Baumgartner is definitely not afraid of heights. After an attempt last week that was canceled due to heavy winds, Baumgartner fell from a height of about 23 miles Sunday afternoon over New Mexico.
Before you get too concerned for his mental sanity, he’s an Austrian daredevil, so he’s used to doing stunts that scare others easily. He’s a 43-year-old former military parachutist. He’s also a badass.
The event was streamed live on YouTube, as this was a giant publicity stunt hosted by Red Bull. It would be nice to have millions of dollars to blow on an opportunity like this. Although it was streamed live, there was a 20-second delay, just in case something absolutely tragic happened.
Were you one of the about 7.3 million people who tuned in online to watch this insane feat? We were too afraid to watch the whole thing.
Baumgartner promised, according to the Washington Post, that this would be his final jump in his high-diving/sky-diving stunt career. And thank goodness for that.
This seems like a kind of silly thing to waste a lot of money on, but maybe that’s how people feel about space travel in general. Is it that kind of attitude that got rid of some funding for the space program recently? Do people think that it’s not worth further exploration?
Granted, space exploration is a much more legitimate expense than a daredevil wanting to break not only world records but also the speed of sound. Something to note: His stunt was on the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager’s attempt to be the first man to break the sound barrier in an airplane.
Red Bull has the money, we suppose, to promote and pay for something this extraordinary. Couldn’t they have just donated it to the space program without threatening somebody’s life? That probably takes all the fun out of it. High risk means high reward.
A stunt, or a feat or whatever you want to call it, shouldn’t receive more attention for its craziness than the space program gets. While what Baumgartner did is very cool, it almost seems like a waste. The company will not release how much the stunt cost in total, but the balloon that took Baumgartner up last week during the first attempt cost $70,000. That doesn’t include the astronaut-like suit Baumgartner had to wear or the technology it took to ensure his safety during those trips.
This earned Red Bull a great amount of attention and publicity; they’ve been planning this event with Baumgartner since 2005.
Next time, try spending that much money on a smarter cause, maybe?
We hear PBS might be in trouble.
