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Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from stratosphere, dies in Italy
- lode 1y agohttps://archive.is/2025.07.17-234516/https://www.theinternational.at/felix-baumgartner-who-jumped-from-stratosphere-dies-in-italy/ https://archive.is/2025.07.17-234516/https://www.theinternat...
- justmarc 1y agoSuch 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 1y agoDefinitely 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.
- falseprofit 1y ago*preferred…
- neuroelectron 1y agoAt 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.
- biggestlou 1y agoWhat on Earth are you talking about?
- miningape 1y agoYeah 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.
- NoOn3 1y agoIf for you outcome is the same why you would prefer capitalism over socialism or communism? only because small group of rich people will be in more good? But if it doesn't affect you in any way, and maybe it will make it worse, there will be no point in it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cenamus 1y agoEqual 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.
- District5524 1y agoCommunism 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.
- inglor_cz 1y agoI 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.
- volleyball 1y ago(Shimon Peres too in list of questionable peace laureates)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cenamus 1y agoThe over 70 criteria wouldn't help much nowadays, with basically every leader being in his 70s+ (Trump, Biden, Xi, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Khomeini, Putin, etc.)
- AceyMan 1y agoop said > professionally retired people over 70
- j3th9n 1y agoYou have your information from the corporate media.
- j3th9n 1y ago[flagged]
- raffael_de 1y agoAs far as Hungary's development of the GDP per capita is concerned your statement is wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...
- gsf_emergency_2 1y ago>Illness Unreviewed translation of "Unwohlseins" Other media hint at seizure/cardiac arrest.
- pantalaimon 1y ago"feeling unwell" would be the more direct and more correct translation
- mithras 1y agoI wouldn't agree, it's a big step beyond just feeling unwell. With this word I would think someone might need medical assistance.
- eviks 1y agoThanks, also got confused by this
- Xenoamorphous 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596845
- sneak 1y agoAP says it was a paraglider crash.
- lordnacho 1y agoIf 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.
- kylecazar 1y agoDefinitely a true statement, but reports are saying he was already unconscious as he fell, so some open questions remain
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y agoNot that I doubt the reports, but how could anyone possibly make that call?
- catlikesshrimp 1y agoYes. 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.
- diggan 1y agoSomeone 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.
- ngruhn 1y agoWell if "unconscious" happens to you in a restaurant you don't fall out of the sky.
- 0x000xca0xfe 1y agoThe final result is often similar while driving. Or walking down a flight of stairs, at least for oneself.
- lionkor 1y agoI watched him jump live, that was incredibly cool and spooky when he started tumbling. I won't forget that
- usr1106 1y agoIt was not transmitted live, but with a suitable delay. They would not have shown it in case.
- meta-level 1y agoReminds me of Yuri Gagarin, first man in space who later died in a plane crash..
- cwicklein 1y agoAnd me of Francis Gary Powers.
- Muromec 1y agoFirst man who returned from space alive
- mongol 1y agoNo man, dead or alive, returned from space before him
- h3half 1y agoThey are either thinking of Vladimir Komarov (who died during Soyuz 1, in 1967 - six years after Gagarin's orbit, for whom Gagarin was the backup crew) or referencing the conspiracy theory that the Soviets tried a couple times to orbit a human, covered up initial failures, and only made Gagarin's success public because it worked. Afaik there's not any evidence of this. The Soviets did have a bent towards secrecy so it's plausible, I guess, but it's definitely more the realm of creepypasta ("there could be dozens of old Soviet capsules in orbit with corpses inside!") than historical fact.
- neuroelectron 1y ago>Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner (56) died on Thursday afternoon in a paragliding accident quite a legacy
- jboggan 1y agoMy 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 1y agoMy son was literally asking me about him yesterday. Wonder how many kids think about him every day.
- basisword 1y agoI was just watching his jump again last week. Was surprised to find his record only stood for a couple of years before someone went higher in a much less media-covered jump.
- franze 1y ago2 years later by a Google guy without much media circus
- sitkack 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace
- dundarious 1y agoEustace went higher, but did not freefall -- he had a parachute to slow his descent. Baumgartner was in freefall. Different categories.
- Rygian 1y agoThe bystanders, and especially the poor woman who was injured in the accident, have for sure lived a traumatizing experience.
- rectang 1y agoFortunately, from what I read, the woman, a hotel employee who was struck by debris from the poolside wooden hut where Baumgartner crashed, is expected to make a full recovery. I hope she is not afflicted by any lingering health or financial problems. I haven’t seen any indication that Baumgartner was paragliding in a forbidden area. My understanding is that restrictions on paragliding are a patchwork, from licensing and insurance requirements to where you are allowed to fly.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 1y ago> Baumgartner lost control of his motorized paraglider due to a sudden illness and crashed into a hotel pool. He may have died while paragliding rather than from paragliding. A heart attack or stroke could have been the actual cause of death
- Zigurd 1y agoRed Bull athletes list: https://www.redbull.com/us-en/athletes 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 1y agoI feel that Penn explained this incredibly well in one of my favourite magic tricks: https://youtu.be/Jko5BGhc-Ys?si=Uz6jvQ5voEYAxg8W 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.
- xanderlewis 1y ago> a tightrope act is just as difficult at any height Well, sort of. But surely part of the feat is overcoming the natural fear of heights.
- Waterluvian 1y agoThat’s true. But I don’t think anyone in the audience is being wowed by that detail.
- Barrin92 1y agoThat's exactly what they're wowed by. The general audience cares about the risk-taking, the bravery and daring aspect of it, and maybe the visual flashiness. It's the psychology that's interesting to a general audience because that's what they relate to. Technical excellence is always something peers are more interested in than spectators, your ordinary viewer isn't invested in the technical proficiency of tightrope footwork.
- franze 1y agoHere in Austria he was a very controversial person cause of his stance on democracy, right wing views and conflicts with Austrian journalists.
- jjcob 1y agoAustrian 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-italien-befragt-augenzeugen-zu-tod-von-felix-baumgartner https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000280134/justiz-in-ita...
- stillsut 1y agoCurious 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers#Death
- MarkMarine 1y agoI’m the a moon’s distance away from a being a pro athlete or pushing any adventure sports field I participate in, but I do things for fun that some people think are insanely dangerous. I’ve toned it back now that I have kids (which changed my thinking) but for a long time I would have been quite happy with that exit from life. Doing something I loved, never put through indignity of advanced age, dying quickly and without suffering. God speed Felix
- tetris11 1y agoI used to walk across pitched roofs 3-floors up as a teen, and squeeze between cars and busses on my bike in narrow london roads (back before bike lanes were a thing) to the point that I would routinely get to my job with bloodied knuckles. At the time I was clearly just vibing off the adrenaline, but looking back on it all as mature adult... I get heart palpatations. There are many parallel worlds where I am not alive, and I think of those other selves often.
- Aeolun 1y agoI feel like humans must be naturally better at surviving these things when young. I see kids doing this stuff every day. Not walking on pitched roofs, but plenty of other stuff that could get them killed if something goes wrong.
- usrusr 1y agoMy risk habits have a rather low chance of dying per injury event, but life changing injury isn't all that rare. I do occasionally see myself envying those with a risk profile that's more on the binary end of the spectrum: where it's either a clean end or everything is fine.
- fuzzythinker 1y agoSlightly misleading title. He's famous for first to jump from the stratosphere, breaking the sound barrier. That wasn't the cause of his death. More on him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner . Maybe a more interesting and impressive fact from the wiki is learning about Alan Eustace, who was a senior VP of engineering at Google. Just before retiring, on October 24, 2014 *at age 57*, he made a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Baumgartner's world record. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2015.
- fuzzythinker 1y agoFound HN post (236 comments) on Alan Eustace breaking the record: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8504931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8504931
- ProAm 1y agoHe only did it once he knew it was possible. And different mechanism (that most people wont understand). While yes he beat the record. Felix did it first.
- Graziano_M 1y agoAt the Air & Space Museum in DC there's a little exhibit for each of them right across from each other.
- ProAm 1y agoHe is a legend in the sport. He deserves that title.
- ChrisArchitect 1y ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596845
- whiteboardr 1y agoQuod Darwin demonstrandum. R.I.P.