I am still trying to figure out what contribution to mankind that celebrated rover is making by showing us in HD what we already know; namely, that Mars is an uninhabitable mass of molten rock and red sand.
This is why I am so hard-pressed to figure out why anyone would regard Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting skyfall on Sunday as anything more than a terrific publicity stunt.
It is certainly noteworthy that he became the first man to jump from a hot air balloon 24 miles up in space: freefalling for almost four and a half minutes (complete with death-defying, out-of-control spins that risked blackout and certain death) and becoming the first skydiver to break the sound barrier of 768 mph by reaching a top speed of 833.9 mph.
Good for him. But does this mean that instead of traveling in SpaceX or Virgin Galactic-type vehicles, Astronauts (and space tourists) might be traveling into space via hot air balloons and freefalling back to earth? No. So what’s the point?
Having said that, as death-defying publicity stunts go, Baumgartner’s makes those performed by more famous daredevils like Evel Knievel and David Blaine (of the recent Times Square electrocution farce) seem timid. However, where space exploration is concerned, there is a reason virtually everybody knows about Neil Armstrong, John Glen, and Buzz Aldrin but virtually nobody knows about Joseph Kittinger…. (Exactly. Google him!)
More to the point, I do not see how Baumgartner becoming the first man to freefall faster than the speed of sound a few days ago does any more to advance our travel through, or understanding of, space than Nik Wallenda becoming the first man to skywalk across the Niagara Falls on a tightrope a few months ago. (And daredevils are invariably men, aren’t they?)
Indeed, it speaks volumes that this skyfall was funded by Red Bull instead of NASA: it was little more than raw, nail-biting entertainment. Which is why producers of the James Bond movies would do well to hire Baumgartner to perform some of his base-jumping stunts in their next installment.
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