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Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from stratosphere, dies in Italy

Zigurd

Red Bull athletes list: https://www.redbull.com/us-en/athletes

The dead ones appear to have been removed from the list, and from all other mentions on the website. Quickly, too. Somebody's got that in their job description.

I no longer find it entertaining to watch sports where there is such a high risk of death, or lifelong impairment, from brain injuries, for example. I used to love ski movies. But too many of the people in the credits are dead now.

Apart from things like unconscionable contracts, I wouldn't restrain people from extreme sports. I'm sure a lot of of them die in their beds. I just don't find it entertaining to watch.

Waterluvian

I feel that Penn explained this incredibly well in one of my favourite magic tricks:

https://youtu.be/Jko5BGhc-Ys?si=Uz6jvQ5voEYAxg8W

We have such a weird relationship with the spectacle of risk. As he says, a tightrope act is just as difficult at any height. The only need to make it dangerous is because the audience wants the circus.

And I think somewhat implicit in the point he’s making is that he believes that while the audience wants the spectacle, the performers have a responsibility not to give it to them.

gdbsjjdn

There's a level of economic coercion involved though as well - "going pro" is only possible by pushing for riskier and riskier stunts. If you want to get paid to ski, skateboard, etc you need to be doing increasingly extreme things to risk your own health and safety. The companies do lots of risk mitigation once you're filming a TV spot, but to get to that level you already had to be putting your body on the line for years.

mikae1

Doing some comparisons with Wayback Machine might give us the full list.

lordnacho

If you die on your first parachute jump, you're unlucky.

If you live your entire life doing these "small chance each time" stunts, maybe we should not be so surprised that your eventual demise was this kind of thing.

Was an interesting character, RIP.

Simon_O_Rourke

There's a concept I read about before called micromorts, where activities are given a danger rating something like the expected number of fatalities per million events.

So riding a motorbike 100 miles is 8 micromorts.

Hang-gliding is 9 micromorts.

Base jumping is 430 micromorts.

And summiting Everest is 37,000 micromorts.

Incidentally, of those - I know of two guys who died either on Everest or at base camp there over the past 15 years. First guy fell on the descent, and the second guy developed health issues at altitude (apparently related to an Israeli team immediately prior stealing their oxygen bottles).

d_e_solomon

I try to calibrate risk based on the likelihood of dying during my commute. I'm glad that there is a more standardized scale!

kylecazar

Definitely a true statement, but reports are saying he was already unconscious as he fell, so some open questions remain

ngruhn

Well if "unconscious" happens to you in a restaurant you don't fall out of the sky.

Simon_O_Rourke

Not that I doubt the reports, but how could anyone possibly make that call?

diggan

Someone so famous and regularly doing spectacular things surely have a bunch of sensors attached to them that reports a bunch of metrics about their physiological state.

catlikesshrimp

Yes. A pathologist can know if there was a catasthropic event like the natural rupture of an artery (e.g. stroke, heart attack) In vivo events evolve differently than post mortem ones, e.g. strangling a dead body shows differently than strangling a person to death.

More recently, he might have been wearing a vital signal monitor that kept logs.

Nowadays probably the latter.

jboggan

My 4-year-old daughter asks to watch his Red Bull Stratos jump almost every night before bed. She's obsessed with space because of him and says "Felix is my favorite astronaut." May he continue to inspire.

laurent_du

My son was literally asking me about him yesterday. Wonder how many kids think about him every day.

stillsut

Curious parallel to Gary Powers: the man who fell from the stratosphere in a shot down U2 and later in life died crash landing into a populated area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers#Death

jjcob

Austrian newspaper Der Standard [1] is reporting that he was using a camera attached with a string, and authorities are considering the possiblity that it got caught in the propellor, leading to a collapse of the parachute.

Allegedly he tried to open the emergency chute, but was already too low.

[1]: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000280134/justiz-in-ita...

gsf_emergency_2

>Illness

Unreviewed translation of "Unwohlseins"

Other media hint at seizure/cardiac arrest.

pantalaimon

"feeling unwell" would be the more direct and more correct translation

mithras

I wouldn't agree, it's a big step beyond just feeling unwell. With this word I would think someone might need medical assistance.

justmarc

Such a shame. People who have met him have always said he was a stand up guy.

Definitely a man who pursued his passions.

RIP.

cenamus

Definitely caused some controversy in recent years aswell, like recommending Orban for the peace nobel prize. Literally the man that turned Hungary into the poorest and most illiberal EU country. But again, Baumgartner prefers dictatorships to democracy.

inglor_cz

I remember Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize not even a year into his first term, with no concrete peace-related achievements under his belt. There are also Kissinger, Abiy Ahmed and Yasser Arafat on the list of laureates. Overall, it might be the weakest of the Prizes, in the "too dependent on momental popularity and political pressure" sense.

The scientific Nobels + Literature are usually awarded with a decent time gap after the relevant achievement, which helps. Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize should only be awarded to professionally retired people over 70. That would prevent it from being too politicized.

falseprofit

*preferred…

neuroelectron

At least they maintained communism, even if officially it stopped being communist, it was still de facto communist and that's why it became so poor. Don't think of them as poor but as equal outcome.

miningape

Yeah I starved to death, but at least we all died equally starved!

Equality of outcome is the cruelest lie the untalented, lazy, and comfortable tell each other. They assume it means raising the bar to their level instead of drawing it on the ground. It's enforced mediocrity, peddled by those who fear effort and resent excellence.

cenamus

Equal outcome? Like 99% of power in Hungary is split between Orban and his uni dorm buddies. The guy doesn't even have any ideology, just loves power, money and football. Used to be bearded liberal left wing, turned gelled hair far right after the first thing didn't pull any voters. Didn't care about immigrants until the far far right party got some votes on the issue and then started leaning in heavily.

biggestlou

What on Earth are you talking about?

District5524

Communism in Hungary was introduced and kept up by Soviets after the 2nd ww. The very considerable difference between Orban and Kadar (the longest serving communist leader) is that Kadar paid attention not to make his direct family and direct friend the most exorbitantly rich guys in 15 years, which probably also made lots of mid-income people poorer in Hungary. And despite very strong democratic backsliding in many areas, it is still more democratic than during Soviet-led times. But that's probably not due to Mr Orban's character or self-restraint. Baumgartner's idea is probably related to fashionable libertarian ideas of those rich people who never had the patience to feel sympathy for other people, nor to study history or humanities, but feel like they should have a say.

franze

Here in Austria he was a very controversial person cause of his stance on democracy, right wing views and conflicts with Austrian journalists.

lionkor

I watched him jump live, that was incredibly cool and spooky when he started tumbling. I won't forget that

neuroelectron

>Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner (56) died on Thursday afternoon in a paragliding accident

quite a legacy