Supersonic free fall from 120,000 feet live at 8:30AM EST

Maybe a little off topic:<p>Red Bull's marketing is impeccable. They started out with all the actionsport athletes and moved upstream to more mainstream, and I guess, more expensive sports (two Formula 1 teams, more soccer teams than I can count), while still doing these crazy things. From Parcours in Santorini, to Air Races all over the world. Seems like every crazy sporting event is sponsored by Red Bull.<p>I think these have allowed them to be still seen as "hip" and not just selling sugar water like Coca Cola.

Nitpick re "edge of space": Low earth orbit starts at around 160 km and orbits decay rapidly below 200 km. This is 36 km altitude. But what I think most people miss is that to "be in space" the way most people think about space you'll need to enter orbit which means that once you get up to 160+ km altitude you need to go sideways at roughly 24 times the speed of sound - and then you're in orbit. Then when you're all done having your fun you need to take all that orbital energy and do something with it. The best idea so far is to use it to burn up a heat shield. This business of going vertical a little higher than jets and a lot lower than satellites is a little pretentious. But it's fun and it's Red Bull so who cares!!

There are precedents, see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger</a> for other crazy skydives

The tech to shoot and transmit this whole event live is almost as incredible as the event itself<p><a href="http://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/cameras-communications/" rel="nofollow">http://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/cameras-communicati...</a>

Just aborted due to high winds. They are going to retry tomorrow.

Is the web site overwhelmed? I'm getting "Loading Javascript" messages, but nothing is happening.<p><pre><code> We're just trying to load the data for you. If you don't have JavaScript enabled in your browser for this site, please switch it on and refresh the page in order to view the Live Jump experience. </code></pre> It would be nice to know if it's working for other people.<p><i>Added in edit: OK - on weather hold - due off an hour from now.</i>

Direct link to the live YouTube stream<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?&#38;v=vkJ5ItzEq3M#" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?&#38;v=vkJ5ItzEq3M#</a>!

This year has been really great for awesome space events. Mars, 2 SpaceX missions, now this. I hope this is just a taste of things to come.

Can someone explain the physics behind this?

While we're waiting for the weather to clear, you can watch nicely edited footage of Kittinger's 1960 record of 100,000 feet; it's at the start of the Boards of Canada video for Dayvan Cowboy: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2zKARkpDW4" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2zKARkpDW4</a>

And it's aborted; 'Gusty winds'.

Looks like they've got a weather hold until 8am Mountain Time (10am Eastern)

Aborted for today, due to too much wind.

Actually, its at 9:30AM EST...

Speechless ...

Aborted.