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Baumgartner's Daredevil Parachute Jump From Space Put On Hold
Velcroman1 writes "For years, an Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner has been planning to take a 23-mile plunge from the edge of space — and in the process, become the first parachutist to break the sound barrier, plummeting toward the ground at 760 miles per hour. The engineers and scientists behind The Red Bull Stratos project, an effort to break the record for the highest freefall ever, billed the jump as more than a stunt. The leap from 120,000 feet was to yield volumes of data that would have been used to develop advanced life support systems for future pilots, astronauts, and even space tourists. But a promoter feels that the jump was his idea, and filed a lawsuit in April to prevent the event from taking place. And now Red Bull has pulled the plug on the project, FoxNews.com reports. 'Due to the lawsuit, we have decided to stop the project until this case has been resolved,' Red Bull said."
Nice to see TFA made a nod to Joe.
Not sure why it was omitted from the summary.
Its a pretty ordinary name in german speaking countries. It basically means "The lucky tree gardener". Daredevil indeed.
Baumgartner is (as the article says) Austrian, so is Red Bull... Ah, and by the way. The guy who sued Red Bull for 'prior idea' (or whatever) is named Daniel Hogan. More infos here.
To error is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the OS.
Out of curiosity, is the sound barrier here defined as the speed of sound on earth, or the speed at the temperature of air 23 miles up?
Mach one is determined by air pressure primarily and it does depend on altitude. Wolfram won't give me the answer below 0.1 bar of pressure. At 50000 feet the speed is pretty much the same as at sea level. I think 50k feet will be the point where the guy in free fall really starts to decelerate.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
And Project Excelsior occurred even before that.
He's actually saying that his specific plans for executing the jump were used by Red Bull after they reviewed and rejected the project. Those plans wouldn't be protectable if they were open knowledge, but given that he was shopping the plans around privately, looking for a partnership, the plans constitute a trade secret.
Trade secrets are the antithesis of most IP law. Once an idea's "out there", the protection disappears, as it should.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
31 kilometers is less than 23 miles, and he didn't break the speed of sound.
"but trade secrets don't have any actual protection under law"
They certainly do.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
He doesn't necessarily have to have a winning case, he just has to have enough of a case for it to be worthy of a day in court, and Red Bull are saying they're happy to give him his day in court and are putting the project on hold in the meantime - it could be that RB signed some form of NDA, or that some part of this was covered by copyright or IP, or it could just be a case of sour grapes and the guy will get laughed out of court.
Mod parent to +5 Informative! Articles talking about Bumgartner's jump ALWAYS say it's the first supersonic skydive, like Joe Kittinger's jump never happened. I'm totally behind Bumgartner's jump but I hate this historical revisionism / severe media amnesia thing that's going on!
At least the media didn't forget about Yuri Gagarin when SpaceShipOne made its first space flight, so I'm hopeful they won't forget Apollo 11 when the first commercial moon landing takes place.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I believe Joseph Kittinger and the USAF thought of it (and did it) before Star Trek was even thought of to be a campy space show that'd never last one season.
{sigh} And fanboys know Star Trek, but they don't know about a guy actually jumping from the edge of space 50 years ago.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The WSJ story has a little more detail than the others. Turns out that Kittinger (the first guy to do anything like this, decades ago) used to work for Daniel Hogan as a consultant on the project. After the meetings with Red Bull, RB informed Hogan that the deal was off, and Kittinger started working for RB on a freshly minted version of the same thing.
The right answer here is, as usual, "who knows?" It looks like there might really be something to the case, and it needs litigating to resolve the problem.
That is one of the funniest exchanges I have ever read.
While it would apply to written reproduction of that plan, it would not cover the stunt itself. Copyright is the right to control copying of the written word. Although it has been extended from the written word into other media (for example photographs), it does not yet extend to stunts.
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