Supersonic jump gives Red Bull stunning marketing boost

On Sunday afternoon, a 43 year old Austrian man ascended 24 miles into the sky on a balloon, aiming to become the first skydiver to ever break the speed of sound. Felix Baumgartner, a veteran of more than 2,500 career dives, went up in a specially designed capsule attached to a balloon, just a few days after an attempt had to be aborted due to high winds.

Landing seven minutes later, Baumgartner became the first man to reach speeds of 833.9mph, and helped to push the boundaries of human achievement.

Such a daring feat could not have been possible without the backing of sponsor Red Bull. The Red Bull Stratos has been planned by a 100-strong team of experts for five years, with the Austrian energy drink maker bankrolling the project and in the process gaining a colossal amount of publicity. Red Bull are famous for sponsoring many extreme sports, including aircraft racing, urban ice-skating, as well as a Formula 1 race-car team.

Contrast this with the many cutbacks that governments are making to funding for research and development in state-funded science institutes, and it is clear that attaching such projects to some form of private sponsorship can be beneficial. In February 2012, US President Barack Obama announced a series of cuts to space-agency NASA’s budget, including a 21 percent drop in funding for planetary-science projects in 2013.

Although some have argued that the attempt is particularly pointless, researchers say that the stunt has helped in the development of future technologies around high altitude flying and space programmes. Lead researcher Art Thompson told reports after the jump: “Part of the programme was to show high-altitude egress, passing through Mach and a successful re-entry back to [subsonic speed], because our belief scientifically is that’s going to benefit future private space programmes or high-altitude pilots; and Felix proved that today.”

The role of private companies in science innovation is becoming much greater, especially now that governments seem unwilling to invest themselves. Projects like paid-for trips to space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic or Felix Baumgautner’s space-jump show that private companies can pick up the slack in broadening the world’s technological horizons.