Baumgartner's Daredevil Parachute Jump From Space Put On Hold 248
Velcroman1 writes "For years, an Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner has been planning to take a 23-mile plunge from the edge of space — and in the process, become the first parachutist to break the sound barrier, plummeting toward the ground at 760 miles per hour. The engineers and scientists behind The Red Bull Stratos project, an effort to break the record for the highest freefall ever, billed the jump as more than a stunt. The leap from 120,000 feet was to yield volumes of data that would have been used to develop advanced life support systems for future pilots, astronauts, and even space tourists. But a promoter feels that the jump was his idea, and filed a lawsuit in April to prevent the event from taking place. And now Red Bull has pulled the plug on the project, FoxNews.com reports. 'Due to the lawsuit, we have decided to stop the project until this case has been resolved,' Red Bull said."
WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
So if someone tells you to jump off a bridge, you're not allowed to do do it if they suddenly decide that no actually it was their idea and they want to keep it?
Re:WTF (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WTF (Score:4, Interesting)
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are you kidding me? So now you're saying that, if I have an idea to do or make something, but someone else beats me to the punch, I have a right to sue if I can prove the idea was mine first? Wow. IF that's that case, I could easily become very, very rich.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Funny)
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Dangit!
Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
The WSJ story has a little more detail than the others. Turns out that Kittinger (the first guy to do anything like this, decades ago) used to work for Daniel Hogan as a consultant on the project. After the meetings with Red Bull, RB informed Hogan that the deal was off, and Kittinger started working for RB on a freshly minted version of the same thing.
The right answer here is, as usual, "who knows?" It looks like there might really be something to the case, and it needs litigating to resolve the problem.
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...there might really be something to the case...
Like free publicity?
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That's exactly the case. He claims he planned and devised the project, brought it to Red Bull, and they rejected it. They then took those plans and implimented them anyway.
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Playing Devil's Advocate for a second: why shouldn't they? When did we grant Intellectual Property rights to plans for promotional stunts. How exactly does he feel that he has been violated - copyright (not applicable), patent (no applicable).... Unless he got them to sign some sort of contract before showing them the plans he has no protection..... and now I'll probably RTFA to discover which of these was true.
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Trade secrets. If someone brings a secret, non-obvious idea to you, in confidence, and you then exploit that idea to their detrement, then you've done something illegal. It's like a patent, except you lose your protection when the idea goes public. From that point it's open season.
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But trade secrets don't have any actual protection under law though - that was the original point of patents. Surely to qualify as a trade secret he would have needed a non-disclosure agreement, and that contract would have offered him the legal protection anyway?
Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
They certainly do [cornell.edu].
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So under American law: anything that a company attempts to keep secret for commercial benefit has federal protection, and it's a crime to spread that information? What a crazy country you guys live in. That is bizarre.
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Last time that I checked Coca-Cola do sell their product in the uk. Here is a description of UK law [gillhams.com]. So as I already said it is quite insane to pass laws to give protection to "secrets". The best way to protect them is to ensure that they remain secret, not having laws to punish people who leak them.
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While it would apply to written reproduction of that plan, it would not cover the stunt itself. Copyright is the right to control copying of the written word. Although it has been extended from the written word into other media (for example photographs), it does not yet extend to stunts.
The future of IP (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what you get for promoting the idea of "Intellectual Property".
If you can, using IP, stop people from making and selling products, stop people from singing songs, stop people from telling stories that contain certain fictional characters. Then why not stop people from making a jump from space?
Trade secrets (Score:5, Informative)
He's actually saying that his specific plans for executing the jump were used by Red Bull after they reviewed and rejected the project. Those plans wouldn't be protectable if they were open knowledge, but given that he was shopping the plans around privately, looking for a partnership, the plans constitute a trade secret.
Trade secrets are the antithesis of most IP law. Once an idea's "out there", the protection disappears, as it should.
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"Hey Red Bull, I've got a *great* idea for a promotional stunt!"
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Sign this NDA and I'll tell you!"
"An NDA? Go away, kid, you bother me."
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I now see a future where you can't do anything at all unless you have the appropriate license from an IP holder.
Re:The future of IP (Score:5, Insightful)
This is saying: "Have a lifelong childhood dream? Well, that dream belongs to us now, and it is only fair because money changed hands, and we bought and paid for that dream."
Thank god that Martin Luther King Jr. didn't accept sponsorships.
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If you have enough lawyers and a weak enough legal system, you can stop anyone doing just about anything. From here, it's a short step to actually getting anyone to do whatever you want.
Short step? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you sure you don't mean "leap"?
Wait... I'm being informed by my attorney that "leap" is too significantly similar to "jump", which is already another's IP. I'm sorry for wasting your time.
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It's more like, someone comes to you with detailed plans on how to make a lot of money jumping off a bridge, you tell them to fuck off, and then you take the plans and try to do it anyway. And then they come along and point out that you've essentially performed corporate espionage by stealing their trade secret.
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Depends what kind of agreement they entered into before the talks I suppose. I don't know the relevant laws for automatic/unspoken/unwritten contracts between two parties in such a scenario. It seems like it would be a very hard business to make a living in, presenting your ideas before you are paid, with no possibility of any patents on your ideas.
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The test for a cause of action for breach of confidence in the common law world is set out in the case of Coco v. A.N. Clark (Engineers) Ltd, (1969) R.P.C. 41 at 47:
* the information itself must have the necessary quality of confidence about it;
* that information must have been imparted in circumstances imparting an obligation of confidence;
* there must be an unauthorized use of that information to the detriment of the pa
"Intellectual property" (Score:5, Insightful)
When saying "wouldn't it be cool to do a parachute jump -- from outer space!!11" gives you a monopoly on draining money off the people actually doing it, the concept of "intellectual property" really shows how childish and immature it is.
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Yes, it's more likely a case of breach of contract, but I was trying to get first post.
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You should sue Somersault.
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To be fair, this sort of thing seems to happen in Hollywood quite a bit I hear. Someone pitches a movie idea, it is rejected and then the same movie is being produced a few weeks later. If someone has a good idea and even writes up a plan, it would seem appropriate that the people who make it happen should give credit and probably even pay the originator of the idea.
That said, there are ample examples of this happening a lot. It would seem to me that if someone were interested in pitching their idea, the
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There's too many valuable ideas being pitched without NDAs for that to fly. It's not worth the time and money, in attorney's fees to review the NDA, on the part of the recipient.
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2. When campaigns start, send C&D letters to all parties.
3. ????
4. Profit.
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I suggest you look up "outer space". It doesn't mean what you think it does.
Not that the article blurb is much better, with a phrase like "edge of space". That's as meaningless as saying "the edge of an estuary". It's a gradual thing, but one thing is certain: This is well within the lower atmosphere, and not nearly far enough out to be considered space. A tall jump, sure, and impressive if pulled off, but it's not space, inner or outer.
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Prior Art: Wasn't this the opening to one of the more recent Star Trek movies?
Pull the plug (Score:5, Interesting)
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... which is exactly what they do as indicated in TFS
Re:Pull the plug (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the US is such a big market, else I'd say they should simply pull their producs out of the country and let the sucker try to sue in a more sane jurisdiction.
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The promoter's claiming that he invested in fundimentally devising the project and how it could be pulled off, though. If Red Bull believed in this project so badly they could've launched it legitimately, instead of (allegedly) rejecting it and then doing it anyway.
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Well, they stole it from the USAF (or was it one of the research agencies), breaking of sound barrier and all.
Solution! (Score:4, Funny)
Ok fine! It's your idea...
Come on. You're going to space!
You need to be a daredevil (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You need to be a daredevil (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You need to be a daredevil (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but in English speaking countries it comes across as "The man who trims arse hair".
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I don't know about funk and ship, but winker is pretty funny.
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Well kinda. Felix isn't a german name though, it's latin. So in German it means Felix Tree Gardener, and maybe in French it means lucky Baumgartner.
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At least he wasn't named Sue.
Joseph Kittinger (Score:2, Informative)
Nice to see TFA made a nod to Joe [wikipedia.org].
Not sure why it [wikipedia.org] was omitted from the summary.
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He flew the observation/chase plane which monitored flight surgeon Colonel John Paul Stapp's rocket sled run of 632 mph (1,017 km/h) in 1955
Rocket sleds had chase planes? What did they expect to happen?
THANK YOU! (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent to +5 Informative! Articles talking about Bumgartner's jump ALWAYS say it's the first supersonic skydive, like Joe Kittinger's jump never happened. I'm totally behind Bumgartner's jump but I hate this historical revisionism / severe media amnesia thing that's going on!
At least the media didn't forget about Yuri Gagarin when SpaceShipOne made its first space flight, so I'm hopeful they won't forget Apollo 11 when the first commercial moon landing takes place.
Nice catchy title... (Score:4, Interesting)
but 37 km is nowhere near space in my book. My personal boundary for space is the end of the Mesosphere. Official boundaries oscillate between 80 and 130 km.
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but 37 km is nowhere near space in my book. My personal boundary for space is the end of the Mesosphere. Official boundaries oscillate between 80 and 130 km.
Now here is a person with serious personal boundary issues.
Re:Nice catchy title... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sick of lawsuits (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else sick of ridiculous lawsuits? Can we get a public vetting vote for lawsuits to determine whether they are worthwhile or not?
Re:Sick of lawsuits (Score:5, Insightful)
I refer the poster to YouTube. Pick a video. Basically any video. Now, look at the comments. Do you really want these guys deciding what lawsuits are "worthwhile"? I think they'd actually get more ridiculous. These people are the ones that sue when they accidentally kill their dog in a microwave.
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True, but you can appoint a weight to their votes through a short questionnaire at the onset of the vote (testing their relevant knowledge level). The questionnaire can be designed in parts, 1/2 general test, and the other quarters by the opposing parties involved.
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Right, that should only cost a few billion dollars in administration costs and tie up the entire population of the United States in assessing and voting on lawsuits. There will be no time to sue anybody and no money to sue anyone with. Great idea.
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I can just imagine such a questionnaire:
It would be effective, and it contains all the information needed to assess who should be assessing (judging, if you will) these cases.
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Orbit (Score:2)
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The short answer: No
The long answer: Orbit is a condition where gravity and lateral velocity are sufficantly well balanced that the object keeps going arround without either reentering the atmosphere or flying off into space. The lateral velocity required for this condition is high enough that no conceivable accident with a stunt like this would put a human into orbit.
Not by a factor of 1000 (Score:2)
Short answer: No.
Long answer: as others have pointed out, speed is necessary to achieve orbit, and the balloon from which he will jump is essentially standing still over the earth. In those conditions, he would only be in orbit at the geostationary altitude, about 36000 km high, which is about a thousand times higher than he will be.
Space = 100km above sea level (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it possible for Slashdot to avoid the marketing-speak? Space begins 100km (62 miles) above sea level. [wikipedia.org] 36km is not "the edge of space".
Re:Space = 100km above sea level (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about a Foxnews report here... Scientific accuracy is not their priority.
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You can scratch Scientific from the statement.
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Why is this tagged Switzerland ? (Score:5, Informative)
Idea not original... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Could be a contractual thing, if Hogan had entered into some kind of agreement with Baumgartner or the engineers, then he could have a case to stop Red Bull from using his team.
This (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why all Intellectual Property laws, with the possible exception of Trademarks, need to be systematically dismantled.
Starting now.
far from it (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think that's overdoing it -- though absolutely zero protections would be preferable to the current situation for many industries.
I favor a balanced approach. Say a decade of protection, similar to todays copyright, but with an explicit exception for private noncomercial copying, and for copying needed to format or timeshift a protected work, or to preserve it.
One problem is, that this is much too LONG for some stuff, like software, while perhaps too short for some classes of works. Hell, if you look at ga
A story from Fox News? (Score:3, Funny)
In other news... (Score:2)
Which sound barrier? (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, is the sound barrier here defined as the speed of sound on earth, or the speed at the temperature of air 23 miles up?
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"Breaking the sound barrier" is at any time defined as going from subsonic to supersonic. If you do that, you've broken the barrier otherwise you haven't, no matter what speed you've been travelling. So umm somewhere on the way down, at whatever the local speed of sound is there?
Re:Which sound barrier? (Score:4, Informative)
Out of curiosity, is the sound barrier here defined as the speed of sound on earth, or the speed at the temperature of air 23 miles up?
Mach one is determined by air pressure primarily and it does depend on altitude. Wolfram won't give me the answer below 0.1 bar of pressure. At 50000 feet the speed is pretty much the same as at sea level [wolframalpha.com]. I think 50k feet will be the point where the guy in free fall really starts to decelerate.
The wrong payload!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Can we push a lawyer out at 120,000 feet?
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SS2 (Score:2)
Now that 120 thousand feet doesn't sound like much if you can jump from 100 km. I wonder if somebody will try it from SpaceShipTwo?
Space flight using a balloon? (Score:2)
According to the article, he was going to go to space using a weather balloon (and then jump into 23 miles of "nothingness")
For so many decades, nations have been spending huge amounts of money designing rockets and space shuttles, and now it turns out they could have just used a balloon!
Oh, good... (Score:2)
Oh, good: another life saved.
Ground Control to Major Tom? (Score:3, Insightful)
If this type of lawsuit was as prevalent in the past, NOTHING would be accomplished.
Again, science and innovation are stifled by simple, unabashed greed.
Uh, prior art here? (Score:2)
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No surprise there (Score:2)
But a promoter feels that the jump was his idea, and filed a lawsuit in April to prevent the event from taking place. And now Red Bull has pulled the plug on the project, FoxNews.com reports. 'Due to the lawsuit, we have decided to stop the project until this case has been resolved,' Red Bull said."
Lunatic claims he was the first to imagine the idea of freefalling from outer space, no doubt after viewing the intro to Mass Effect 2. Suicidal daredevil breathes sigh of relief, seeing a way out of this certain death stunt.
More prior art (Score:4, Funny)
They did a space jump with a Corvette [youtube.com] in Heavy Metal [imdb.com] back in 1981.
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The project has been around for a little longer, though.
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I believe Joseph Kittinger and the USAF thought of it (and did it) before Star Trek was even thought of to be a campy space show that'd never last one season.
{sigh} And fanboys know Star Trek, but they don't know about a guy actually jumping from the edge of space 50 years ago.
Re:It was my impression.... (Score:4, Informative)
31 kilometers is less than 23 miles, and he didn't break the speed of sound.