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Comment by manaskarekar | Hacker News Reader

No. The sugary soda is what pays for this inspiring and informative break from the shit on the learning channel.

I think this is a perfectly fair debate, with good points on both sides. It's similar to the incredibly ironic sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco and fast food companies. Or perhaps to Bill Gates using illegal monopolistic methods to impose the Windows Tax on the world and then spending the wealth saving lives.

These are deep issues to ponder about morality, touching on Ends vs. Means, although that may be OT for HN. But Felix's ambition is somewhat noble, even if RedBull's sponsorship may not be.

It's interesting, for sure. But the goal is to get you to drink more Red Bull. It's a very unique ad, but still an ad. For a sugary beverage people should probably actually be drinking less of, not more.

They're going to be spending money to sell their sugary beverage one way or another, but it's cool they're doing it in a way that will advance the state of science rather than just polluting the world with more billboard ads.

But, will it advance the state of science? Maybe if he actually goes to Mach 1 that could prove interesting but otherwise the "science" part of that whole thing makes me cringe.

For example they put the "edge of space" at 36km (it's actually usually considered to be at ~100km), there is no explanation for such gross errors except that they want to market the crap out of this.

While you care it's not the edge of space, and I care, do your mother care? Does she know the difference between the two, or is 128,000 feet just really high, and might as well be outer space. If anyone does figure it out, well yeah it's a marketing spin, but it doesn't discount what he did and what it took to get there.

But with such a huge spin on it, people will not only miss an opportunity to be educated on what he actually did, they are actively being misled about it. I just can't stand such rubbish tactics.

The jump height is just one particular point that I noticed, and it was a point where they seemed to deliberately put a lot of spin on it in a couple of places:

1) They consistently called it "edge of space". It's a lot closer to an airliners flight height than the edge of space (100km).

2) Their consistent use of fish-eye lenses for the outside imagery made it seem like you can actually see the earth's curvature, conjuring up images of space-flight.

3) Whenever he talked with Kittinger on the ground, they background animation showed a rotating earth from LEO.

Together this all seems to mislead an unsuspecting viewer into believing that he jumped from somewhere a lot higher. What's wrong with being honest about it being 39km and nowhere near space?

39 is more than halfway from 13 to 100, on a reasonable logarithmic scale.

On a logarithmic scale I can easily get halfway to the top of Mount Everest by walking onto some hill. Doesn't mean I should claim I went there.

It seems the highest a balloon ever went was 53km. SpaceShipOne went to the 100km and it took them a lot more effort. The altitude record for jet aircraft is 37,650m, this is about the same as the height he jumped from and seems be a better comparison to me.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record

You're right, it's an ad at the end of the day.

But there are much worse (debatable) products that spend money on really shitty ad campaigns. So this isn't really bad.

I personally respect Red Bull for having found a niche (crazy adventure sports of all sorts) and making possible whole careers in these amazing sports.

At the end of the day, not a lot of people believe you NEED Red Bull to make this jump, but thousands of kids around the world are being inspired right this minute.

I agree, but then I get worried that the same kids don't understand what sponsorship means, and that they'll assume that drinking Red Bull is what people like this do, and then they'll start up a very unhealthy and addictive habit (drinking lots of Red Bull). Which is pretty bad.

I think you underestimate kids' intelligence. I would worry about constant bombardment from the TV, and product placement in all their favorite shows far more than an event like this :)

Because no one other than you can see through the marketing spin?

If marketing didn't work, they wouldn't do it.

Please don't play the kid card. So played out.

http://www.redbullstratos.com/assets/m/images/mission/launch...

No soda there.

Actually, Red Bull is also investing in "serious" sport, with profit interests. Successfully so, as well:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/26/red-bull-raci...

They also own a NASCAR, a football and an ice hockey team.

Don't forget, caffeinated soda

It is certainly a worthy project to be funded, with a significantly smaller moral compromise than in the case of tobacco companies.

Not to mention there are twice as many versions of Red Bull without sugar than with.

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